


Akira Shirogane and the Accidental Interdimensional Road Trip

by Confused-Bird (DoomedTimeline), Spazzcat, squirenonny



Series: Voltron: Duality [18]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Allura/OC - Freeform, Alternate Realities, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Keith/Lance - Freeform, Matt/Shiro - Freeform, Mostly Gen, Original Characters - Freeform, Romantic relationships depend on the verse but include:, matt/shiro/allura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-24 09:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15627765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoomedTimeline/pseuds/Confused-Bird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spazzcat/pseuds/Spazzcat, https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: "All right," Pidge said. "You ready to be the first human to teleport?"Akira flashed them a thumbs-up. "Finally," he said dryly, "A chance to outshine my brother."(Akira should know better than to take the first ride with a teleporter prototype. Instead, he finds himself touring the multiverse in a desperate attempt to find his way home again.)





	1. Z1A3P12A3C1S3K3L2P2H1S3M13T2L5M1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, friends! Guess what today is? Today is _Voltron: Duality's_ second birthday! *throws confetti* To celebrate, Bird, Spazz, and I got together to write a little ball of angst and dimension hopping. (Don't worry, the first chapter is deceptively fluffly.) This is an Akira-centric fic, so if you found your way here from Bird's or Spazz's pages and haven't read Duality, you're... probably going to be a little lost. If you really want to dive in, then I suppose the bare minimum you need to know is that Akira is Shiro's twin brother and he's joined the team on the castle-ship by the time this story takes place.
> 
> We're also going to take full advantage of the existence of alternate realities to visit the 'verses of Bird's [Voltron: The Next Generation](https://archiveofourown.org/series/908859) and Spazz's [The Last Aspect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11165202/chapters/24920571). Strictly speaking, you don't _need_ to have read them to understand this fic, seeing as Akira also has no clue what he's stumbling into, but you should go read them anyway! They're great stories written by great people, and knowing their characters ahead of time can only add to the feels-fest that is this fic.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy the ride!
> 
>  **General Warnings:** References to, and fallout from, numerous instances of character death (including major character death) mostly off-screen and/or in the past in various alternate realities. Other warnings will be listed in chapter notes as needed.

When Akira walked into the Green Lion's hangar, it was to a scene of carnage. Bits of red pulp dotted the floor and walls, sliding down to the floor and leaving wet trails behind. A momentary flash of panic subsided when he noticed shattered green rinds mixed in among the pureed red flesh.

"Watermelons...?" he asked. "Where the heck did you get water--"

"Look out!"

Akira moved before he recognized the voice as Pidge's, and a watermelon whizzed past his head and out into the corridor, where it smashed against the floor, guts and bits of rind sliding a good thirty feet past the point of impact. Akira leaned over to get a better view of the mess, then whistled.

"I give it a six of ten for presentation, but that's a solid eight for execution," he said, turning back to the hangar, where Pidge was peeking out from behind an upended workbench splattered with watermelon guts. They grinned sheepishly at him while Hunk sprinted over to check Akira for injuries. "I'm fine," Akira assured him. "Not helping you clean this up, but I'm fine."

A laugh bubbled up from behind the workbench barricade, and Pidge reached out without looking to smack the side of Matt's head. Matt sat up, stuck his tongue out at them, then swiped up a handful of watermelon flesh from the front of the barricade and flicked it at Pidge. They squawked, rounded on him, and pounced as he started laughing again.

Hunk sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Guys, come on. Don't fight."

Akira patted his shoulder. "They're siblings, Hunk. Just accept it and move on."

"I don't see you and Shiro fighting like this."

"True." Akira nodded. "I don't think we ever have been left alone in a room full of smashed watermelon with no adult supervision."

Pidge turned from where they were sitting on Matt's chest and gave Akira an unimpressed look. "You and Shiro _are_ the adult supervision."

"I count as an adult now? Sweet."

"What about Coran and Ryner?" Matt said.

Pidge snorted. "Coran's an enabler and you know it."

"And Ryner clearly doesn't have the patience to try to corral one amateur Mythbuster, let alone three." Akira paused halfway to the workbench barricade when he caught sight of a heap of watermelons by the wall. "Where did you get these from, anyway? I didn't think we brought any watermelons from Earth."

"We didn't," Pidge said. Matt rolled over, dislodging them from their perch on his chest, and they pouted at him for a moment before darting over to Akira. They flung their arms around him and glared in Matt's direction. "Hunk and Ryner and I have been experimenting. Shiro said he liked salted watermelon, which, ew, but it's also something that's easy to do after a tough mission, assuming we can ever get the watermelons right."

Akira glanced down at the red flesh underfoot. "It _looks_ right."

"But the taste is all wrong," Hunk said.

Pidge gave him a look. "Watermelon doesn't taste like anything to begin with."

"It does if you salt it."

"You're right. In that case it tastes like salt and disappointment. Much better than eating crunch water."

Akira interrupted the culinary debate by grabbing Pidge and throwing them over his shoulder (and almost earning himself a foot in the face as a reward as they flailed and screeched in his ear.) "Okay, so you have a bunch of not-actually-watermelons. Why are you flinging them at innocent bystanders?"

"I like the fact that you think you're innocent," Pidge said. They wriggled, huffed, then nudged Akira's shoulder until he turned toward the pedestal in the middle of the hangar. Green was nowhere to be seen, which Akira took to mean she'd gotten fed up with the watermelon ballistics and had gone to crash with one of her sisters. "We're trying to build a teleporter."

Arching an eyebrow, Akira approached the pedestal and spotted a device about the size of a smartphone attached to an elastic band and covered in watermelon guts. Pidge squirmed some more until Akira put them down, and they snatched up the device to show it off. "This is our fifth prototype," they explained. "The other ones all blew up."

Akira crossed his arms and gave them a flat look. "That doesn't sound very promising."

They fluttered a hand in his direction as they picked up the device and wiped off a little bit of juice that had gotten on the bottom. "Minor miscalculation with the gravity modulator."

"Technically?" Matt put in, coming up beside Akira and leaning an arm on his shoulder. "The first two prototypes got crushed, the third exploded, and the fourth appears to have been atomized."

Akira glanced over at him. "What, no scrambling of material composition? I'd honestly be a little impressed if you managed to create a teleporter-shaped watermelon."

Pidge grinned, but they were already headed back to the workstation--the one further back in the room, well clear of the splash zone. They grabbed a cord and connected the device to their laptop. "We're close," they said, already diving into the code.

"Oh, yes," Matt said. "When we said we wanted to slingshot people across the universe, we were being quite literal. Scale this up by a couple orders of magnitude and we might be ready for the first full-scale trials."

Without looking up from their computer, Pidge said, "Akira? Do me a favor and rub some watermelon in my brother's hair."

Akira grinned, but he just went to sit on the edge of Pidge's work station as Hunk and Matt gathered around, running their own calculations and tossing around ideas for how to improve the device. When it came to physics and engineering, Akira was a couple steps above layman, but the conversation among the techies flew right over his head, and he let it go on for a few minutes before nudging the conversation back towards his original purpose in coming here.

"When was the last time any of you ate?"

Pidge shrugged. "Couple hours ago?"

"Uh-huh." Akira picked up what he thought had once been a paperclip, but with now more closely resembled a Celtic knot. "And what time was it a ‘couple hours ago’?"

Pidge heaved a sigh, but leaned back in their chair to pout at Akira. "I don't know. Like, noon? One?"

Akira set down the paperclip knot and hopped down. "That's what I thought. It's almost ten, and the three of you missed dinner."

"That can't be right," Matt said, rubbing his eyes. "I swear I set an alarm."

Hunk stretched his hands over his head. Unlike the other two, he seemed like he might actually get moving in the near future. "Yeah. Pretty sure you snoozed it twice then shut it off because it kept breaking your concentration."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh," Akira said. "Now, _up_. All three of you. We're going to go grab some leftovers, and then I'll do whatever gruntwork you need for three hours."

Pidge gave him a dirty look, but quickly went back to typing, like they wanted to hurry up and work out another bug or two before Akira dragged them away. "I thought you were the fun brother."

"Oh, believe me. Takashi was more than willing to do this himself. He would've made you go to bed now, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm doing you a favor."

Hunk stood, Matt making one final note on his screen before switching it off and crossing to Pidge's shoulder to give them a nudge. They grunted, then elbowed him, then finally relented, making a whole show out of saving their work, shutting off the screen, and standing up with enough force to send their chair careening out into the middle of the watermelon graveyard.

Akira smiled and ruffled their hair, and the four of them headed out to grab some leftovers.

* * *

They returned to the Green Lion's hangar fifteen minutes later carrying a few bowls of snacks. Despite Akira's best efforts to be the responsible one, the others claimed to not be hungry and shoveled down only a minimal portion of the lasagna-esque dish Hunk had made in bulk two nights ago. The snack food and fruit was a compromise, though Akira didn't honestly hold out much hope for any of it getting eaten. Matt maybe would, but Pidge's hyperfocus wouldn't leave room for a simple awareness that food was in the room and Hunk was indignant enough at all the watermelon juice sticking up the teleporter's casing. If Akira went and suggested he snack on something while he worked? Where he might get crumbs _inside_ the device?

Akira liked having his hide intact, thank you.

There wasn't a whole lot of grunt work to be done, but Akira fetched watermelons each time Team Science was ready to run another test, and he entertained himself by familiarizing himself with the design of the prototype. (The sixth one, which someone had already put together just in case something went wrong with number five… as it did on the second test.)

Akira was crouched behind the barricade with the others, only his head poking up as Pidge counted down to launch. They had a circle painted on the floor ten feet away where they were aiming the watermelon, but Akira was poised to duck down, dragging the others with him if need be. The last test had been a complete dud, but Akira hadn't forgotten his first encounter with airborne produce.

Pidge counted down from three, then pressed the button, and the watermelon disappeared in a shower of blue particles. Akira waited, and waited, and glanced up just in case something weird had happened, but the watermelon never reappeared.

"Did you disintegrate it again?" Akira asked, slowly standing as Matt and Hunk went to check the pedestal.

"Doubtful," Matt said. "Last time there was a definite mist left over afterwards."

Akira wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

"Hey. That's why we're using watermelons."

Akira sat back as the other three debated what had gone wrong. Pidge blamed mechanical failure, Hunk turned right around and blamed the programming, and Matt ignored them both to go pull up the castle-ship's status report.

"Found it," he said. "We're moving about one tenth of one percent faster now than we were when we did our calculations."

"So we spaced a watermelon?" Pidge asked.

Hunk grinned. "Or we scared the pants off some poor Guardsman by making a watermelon show up in his bathroom."

Akira snorted, then picked up prototype number six. "So? Another go?"

They ran another test, this time using real-time data from the castle's main computers, and Pidge scaled Akira like a cat climbing a tree when the watermelon appeared, intact, on the edge of the marked circle. Hunk grumbled about the accuracy, Matt grabbed a scanner to make sure the watermelon's insides hadn't been scrambled in transport, and Pidge shooed Akira off to grab another watermelon.

A dozen trials later, they'd worked out all the kinks, run all the tests, and run out the last of Akira's three hour promise.

"Nice work," Akira said. "What do you say we call it a night?"

Pidge's fingers flew across their keyboard. "Soon," they said. "I just wanna..."

They left the thought unfinished, and Hunk shook his head, slumping down in his seat. "No, man, I think Akira's right. Let's end on a high note."

Matt nodded. "Next step is... well, I would say animal trials, but we don't exactly have easy access to lab rats out here."

"We could skip straight to human trials," Pidge said. "We've already moved organic material, and nothing went horrifically wrong."

Hunk stared down his nose at them. "I think you need to get some sleep, Pidge. No way are we ready for human trials. We need a couple more weeks, minimum, before we even think about that."

"It'll be fine," Pidge said. "I'll take the first go; I don't mind."

Matt chewed on a hangnail, his brow furrowed. "I dunno, Pidge, Hunk's got a point."

"Fine." Pidge pushed their chair back, grabbing the teleporter from the edge of the desk. "You two go to bed. I'm gonna run a few more tests."

Akira opened his mouth, ready to channel Takashi and put an end to the experiments for the night, but one look at Pidge said that wasn't going to do him any good. If he kicked them out now, they'd only come back in an hour, alone, and run their test anyway. With a sigh, he squeezed Matt’s shoulder to quiet him, then crossed to where Pidge was busy fiddling with the device. They'd given the latest prototype a bit of an upgrade, adding a more intuitive user interface. (It was, after all, designed as a personal transport, which meant the person using it should be able to input their own coordinates.)

Pidge looked up, eyes narrowed in distrust, but Akira only held out a hand. "If we're doing this, we're going to need you monitoring the process, just in case any anomalies crop up. I'll take the first ride."

" _What?_ " Hunk's voice was barely a squeak, and his mouth continued to work silently for several seconds after the words stopped coming.

Matt was only a little better. "You sure about this, Akira? I mean _absolutely_ sure?"

Akira shrugged. "I trust you guys. Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"

"You could end up like the first fifty watermelons," Hunk said, spreading his arms to encompass the scene of pulpy devastation. "I really don't want to have to clean up Akira-guts, you guys."

Akira clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll be fine. Relax."

"We should at least call Coran. Just in case you get hurt?"

"You want to wake him up, be my guest. Personally, I think he needs all the sleep he can get."

Hunk moaned, covering his face with his hands, but Pidge was already in motion. At their direction, he went to change into a Voltron Guard flight suit--a concession to Hunk's reminder that none of them knew what kind of forces teleportation exerted on a person. Not enough to squish a watermelon, as Pidge pointed out, but Hunk didn't want to take any chances.

Once he was changed, Akira strapped the device to his wrist, held out his hand so Pidge could input the coordinates for his jump, then nudged the pedestal out of the way so he could stand in its place.

"All right," Pidge said. "You ready to be the first human to teleport?"

Akira flashed them a thumbs-up. "Finally," he said dryly, "A chance to outshine my brother."

Pidge laughed, grabbed their laptop, and settled in to watch. "Big blue button at the bottom. Whenever you're ready."

Akira raised his hand in a sloppy salute, took a deep breath, and pressed the button. Before he had time to worry about the risks, he was gone.


	2. Z2A4P0A4C0S0K0L0P0H0S0M0T1L0M0

Even with the flight suit, it felt like his guts were being put through a blender. The pressure made him feel like he could pop like a grape and the contents of his body be spilled out for anyone to see. 

But then for a second it felt like he didn't exist. Did he exist? 

Was he a person? 

What was a person?

There were voices all around, speaking and talking at different levels of volume. He could pick and focus on anyone.

Then there was darkness.

Nothing 

Akira.

Who?

Light.

Right. That was him, his name was Akira.

The voices exploded into his mind like a dam had just broken. 

It hurt, it hurt so much.

Akira opened his eyes slowly, groaning as he pushed himself up.

“Note to self… tell Pidge they need to do something for pressure," he sighed. He looked around and furrowed his brow. This certainly didn't look like the castle or any neighboring ships.

“What the fuck..?” Akira mumbled to himself and stood up. 

This definitely wasn't the castle.

So where the hell was he?

The sound of footsteps behind him made him turn. Three guards rounded the corner, talking quietly amongst themselves, seemingly not noticing Akira. He noted that their uniforms weren't any he recognized.

“Excuse me!” He called, gaining their attention. “Can you tell me where I am?”

There was a moment of silence as they finally noticed Akira standing dead center of the hallway. A look of realization dawned on the guards faces and hefted their guns, pointing them at Akira.

“Halt in the name of the Altean Empire!”

“Altean Empire…?” What the hell.

The first blaster shot hit a few feet next to him, burning the ground below. 

Akira stared at it for a few seconds before saying, “Okay, I’m gonna take that as my cue to get out of here.”

With that, he turned and hightailed it out of there. He didn’t know where he was but running in the opposite direction was definitely the best course of action as of now.

The halls look too similar for him to keep track of where he was going, a left, a right, another left, left. 

Jesus Christ was he just running in circles?

He guessed he wasn't because every few entryways he would would encounter a group of guards or a group of scientists with people following them who had strange devices embedded in their necks. 

He stumbled and fell, but quickly rolled to the edge of the hallway, panting heavily and trying to catch his breath. 

Akira couldn’t hear the guards’ footsteps anymore and figured he had a few seconds to catch his breath before having to start again.

Suddenly hands wrapped around his arm and pulled him through a vent in the wall. His mind went into overdrive and he struggled against the person holding him. 

“Let me go!” He yelled, flailing and kicking out behind him. Another hand came over his mouth and muffled his yells as the group of guards came running past the vent. 

Akira stared as they went by and eventually slumped and panted, the hands holding him back slowly pulled away. He looked behind him to see two figures in grey suits. One humanoid and the other very noodle-like with too many arms. Both had masks covering their faces with a greenish ‘V’ that thought it needed to be fancy.

The humanoid stared at him for a few seconds before taking their mask off, letting their hair tumble out. 

Akira’s eyes met equally wide ones as he and the human looking male stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Ryou…?” The male said softly, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Akira blanched for a second at the heavily Scandinavian accent “Ryou!” his smile widened and launched himself at Akira, hugging him tightly. Akira didn’t hug back though, severely confused as to who this this guy was, why he was hugging him, and who he thought Akira actually was.

The stranger pulled back after a few seconds, still smiling brightly.

“What happened? How did you escape? How did you manage to escape the Hoktril??” He asked in rapid succession, gripping Akira’s shoulders tightly, but after having no response after a few seconds his brow furrowed. “Ryou?”

“I… think you have the wrong person?” Akira said slowly, trying to shrug the other's hands off his shoulders. 

“That’s funny, Ryou come on! It’s me, Sven, your brother? Surely you haven't forgotten me after six years.”

“Look.” Akira said, pushing the other's hands off his shoulder firmly. “My name isn’t Ryou. My name is Akira.”

“You certainly don’t look like Akira. Our  _ Altean _ double agent.”

“Well that’s not me either!” Akira snapped, letting out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know where I am, what's going on, WHY those guys were chasing me, or who the hell you are.”

Sven pulled back, a look of horror on his face before dissolving to a more somber expression, leaning back against the vent wall.

“I knew I shouldn't have been that hopeful…” Sven mumbled to himself, pinching his brow with a sigh. Akira looked at him, then to the noodle person who had yet to say anything. He sighed softly and leaned against the wall. 

“I’m… sorry that I’m not your brother… but uh… what’s a hoktril?”

“The Hoktril is a device implanted into the back of the neck,” the noodle finally spoke up. “It controls its host, keeping them in a passive state. They say it is to weed out the aggression in a race.” There was obvious distaste in his voice, almost cursing its existence. 

“It's also used as a punishment for rebels…” Sven growled. “Anyone who’s a known rebel has their family taken and forcibly enslaved… the caught rebels get the same treatment...They say it’s all for peace of the universe, but they just enslave anyone who disagrees with them like it's a dystopia.”

Akira felt like he was going to be sick. It sounded disgusting what was happening to these people.

“What… kind of monsters would even use such a thing…?” he asked, gripping his flight suit tightly.

“Oh you haven’t heard of the  _ Great Amazing Peaceful Altean Empire!?”  _ The noodle exclaimed, thrusting his multiple hands into the air. “Only .000038 percent of realities have someone who hasn't heard of it, and it’s only if they lose their memory!”

“Shut up Slav.” Sven sighed. “But yes, the Altean Empire.”

“Alteans? But I thought….” Akira started but shook his head. “Just… how is there an empire?”

“Ten thousand years ago, the Empress stopped Zarkon before he overthrew the Alteans. After that, she conquered the rest of the known universe in the name of peace and prosperity. But we all know that was just a ploy to keep everyone else she deemed inferior to Alteans under her boot.” Sven explained, staring up at the ceiling blankly. “Ten thousand years they’ve been destroying and enslaving people who they thought were too aggressive or were a nuisance. That’s where we started, the Guns of Gamara, we want to see that empire burn and save everyone who was wronged by the Alteans.”

Akira nodded slowly, taking all of it in.

“How is it possible that you do not know any of this?” Slav asked, crossing his arms. 

“Where I’m from, nothing is like this…” Akira said. “My friends were just trying to make a teleporter, I was their test subject, and… I just ended up here? I don’t know what happened.”

Sven and Slav gave each other a look.

“Alternate reality?”

“It seems likely.”

“Alternate reality?” Akira laughed uneasily. “That’s not possible, is it?”

Sven only shrugged. “We met a couple people a few months ago claiming to be paladins of Voltron, but Voltron… isn't like they said it was.”

Akira furrowed his brow in thought. Now how the hell did he end up in a different reality when he was only supposed to transport locations?

“How the hell am I supposed to get home now though…” Akira mumbled, looking at the device attached to his arm and the coordinates on the screen. He definitely had no idea what they meant and messing with them didn't seem like a good idea.

“Let me see your device.” Slav said, though he grabbed Akira’s arm before he could make any response. He hummed as he inspected the gadget and looked over all the numbers before inputting new digits in place of the others. “If what I have figured is correct, those coordinates should transport you to your next destination.”

Akira nodded and looked over the new set of coordinates, only shrugging as he still had no idea what they meant.

Sven pulled a small flash drive out of his pocket, staring at it for a second before handing it to Akira, who took it slowly, staring at it. 

“I figure..” Sven started. “If your friends are smart enough to accidentally create a transreality warp device… maybe they’ll be smart enough to help us with figuring out how to remove the hoktril?” There was a strained smile on his face, that of someone who had seen too much suffering in his lifetime. 

Akira nodded and put the flash drive into his pocket, gripping it tightly. “You sure you won’t need it yourself?”

“We always make two copies of data we salvage in case one of us is captured or killed.”

He nodded again, finger hovering over the button in the center of the device. 

“You sure this code will get me out of here?” Akira asked, a lump forming in his throat at the thought of every possible way this could go wrong.

“Yes, it should get you out of this reality.” Slav said confidently, pressing all of his four right arms to his chest. 

Akira nodded, finger still only hovering for a few more seconds before he pressed it. 

“Of course, there is still only a 2.6124% probability that--” Akira had already been engulfed in a cloud of blue particles, slowly fading away to show he was no longer there. “--the next universe will be your home.”


	3. Z2A1P0A5C2S2K4L3P3H3S2M5T3L0M3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Minor emetophobia warning for the very end of the chapter.

Akira felt cold, colder than he had ever felt before. With a groan, he slowly pushed himself off the ground. 

Something felt… off, about where he was. 

The constant presence of Matt, Keith,  and Red-their bond-was gone. 

Nothing. 

Silence after so long of having the bond… just felt wrong.

Akira sat up completely and pressed a hand to his head, slowly opening his eyes. 

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing. No stars, No planets. The only thing he did see was the floating piece of rock he was sitting on and the smaller chunks of ice and rock that surrounded it. 

A sudden realization hit him right in the gut. He didn't feel Red, at all. It was like she didn't exist. He didn't feel any of the other lions either.

Thinking about it, had he really felt Red in the previous reality? He knew that he was caught up with running around and getting together with Sven and Slav. But still, he didn't pay attention enough to realize if his bond with Red was actually there. 

With that he started to realize nothing existed in this universe, it was just… empty.

Akira’s breath caught in his throat. It was like he was caught halfway between universes.

What if he was?

What if the device malfunctioned and sent into a void of nothingness?

Akira scrambled for the device on his arm, checking to see if anything was wrong, if any wires had come loose or anything else, but it was fine. It worked. Why did it send him here?

Tears gathered in his eyes as he looked at the coordinates, trying to guess any other just to get him out of this void of non-existence.

He pressed the button as soon as he finished the code, pleading with the universe... counting on Red, if she was still even out there somewhere, that it would get him out of there.

He was gone within seconds, the blue particles enveloping him.

* * *

The first thing Akira felt when landing in this new universe aside from aches in his bones, was bereavement. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was Red who grieved in the back of his mind.

It was then that he realized he didn't sense Matt or Keith. He didn't feel any paladin. 

Were… they all dead?

Tears gathered and dripped from his eyes, in part from the thought of his friends being dead and only amplified by Red’s own grief.

Through a blur of tears, Akira looked down at the device strapped to his arm and tried to input another code. 

As the blue particles took effect, he whispered a small apology to the Red Lion of this universe, knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. 

His mind went blank as he was completely covered in the effect. 

* * *

As Akira hit the next universe, he immediately doubled over in pain. It felt like hot irons were being shot through his head. 

He screamed in pain and gripped his head tightly. He had started sobbing, crying for someone-anyone to help him. All he wanted to do was get home. 

After a few minutes of the searing pain, he had gotten used to it enough to think at least a little bit clearly.

Red was dead, or dying. He couldn’t tell. 

All he felt was her pain and suffering. 

Akira didn’t move just yet, though he knew he needed too, but part of him wanted to comfort this Red in her possible last moments.

As she faded, Akira felt like he couldn't breathe, continuously sucking in breaths as he silently sobbed, weeping for the lion he knew so well. It hurt deep in his chest, like someone was constricting his throat and heart. And then, she was abruptly gone.

After a few minutes, he shakily brought up the console and typed in new coordinates, letting his eyes close as the particles enveloped him. 

* * *

The particles faded away, leaving Akira laying on his back and tears dripping down his eyes. He could feel Red grieving again, but it wasn't the same as before. He could scarcely sense a paladin bound to the Lion, none he knew, but he knew that her Paladin was dying. 

It wasn't even a minute until he felt that bond break and the paladin slowly faded from his mind.

He could feel Red crying, it echoed in his head loudly.

But there was nothing he could do.

So he left.

* * *

There was pain again. Why did there have to be pain. He knew Red was dead. He couldn’t do anything about it.

He left.

* * *

Even more pain. He felt it reverberate through his body and being. 

He felt so sorry for Red. 

His throat felt so raw from the screaming. 

He couldn’t take it.

* * *

Nothing.

So cold.

Where was Red?

* * *

Melancholy. Grief. Red was crying. Akira wondered who left her behind.

* * *

He cried. 

* * *

Akira fell into the next universe full expecting to find pain, grief, or nothing. 

But he didn't, instead he finally felt Red. There was no pain, no grief, just Red and two other presences. He let out a weak laugh, pulling his helmet off as he heard alarmed voices and footsteps racing towards him. 

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, finally opening his eyes. The castle, he was in a lion’s hangar. 

Finally.

He quickly pressed a hand to his mouth as his stomach finally revolted, threatening to make him lose the contents of his stomach. He did do so anyway. He heard voices around him, the sound of a bayard activating. Akira coughed a bit before looking up at two faces. Shiro and Coran. 

“Takashi...Thank fuck…” he said softly, still looking at them as things grew blurry and dark until he realized he fell over. Passing out right in front of them.


	4. Z3A2P5A1C1S3K1L2P2H1S2M24T1L5M3

Akira's head was pounding as he began to wake up. He let out a low groan as he opened his eyes.  
  
Two figures stood over him, faces slowly focusing as he woke up further. Shiro with a look of confusion and concern on his face as he peered down at Akira, and Coran with equal concern.     
  
"Hey... I'm home..." Akira mumbled, reaching up to hold his head as he slowly sat up. A hand came to rest at his back to steady him when he started to falter back.  It looked like he was in the infirmary but it didn't look quite right to him, he shook his head and finally got a good look at the two, who only stared back at him like he was nobody.   
  
"Takashi? Coran? Why are you looking at me like that? I thought you would be excited I came home." Akira laughed awkwardly, but slowly went quiet as realization dawned on him. "...I'm not home, am I?"   
  
"Uh... I'm sorry I don't think so." Shiro said, shifting slightly. "But uh... who are you? Where did you come from?"   
  
Akira winced at this version of his brother not knowing who he was, but took a deep breath and gripped the sheets covering his legs.   
  
"My name is Akira Shirogane, I'm your brother, or at least different version of you's brother. I'm an adjunct for the red lion, uhhhh I got sent on an interdimensional road trip after Pidge, Matt, and Hunk tried to build a teleporter that went wrong."   
  
"Well uh..." Shiro paused, rubbing the back of his head. "I don't have a sibling named Akira but either way... What's an adjunct?"   
  
"Uhhhh............... It's basically a support guy with a special bond with a paladin? I have a bond with Matt and Keith."   
  
"Matt and Keith-?..." Shiro started but stopped raising his hands. "Okay pause, we should probably move this to the lounge. It'd probably be better to talk about this somewhere more comfortable than the infirmary."   
  
Akira snorted and nodded. "Yeah, probably would be a good idea." He slowly pulled the covers off of his legs, though he paused at realizing that he was no longer wearing the Guard flight uniform.   
  
"Uh, real quick question." Akira squeezed out. "Who changed my clothes and where did the device on my arm go?"   
  
"You were covered in`vomit, and we had to clean you up" Coran piped up, "I pulled off your suit so it could be cleaned and your...device is on the table there."   
  
Akira let out breath of air he didn't know he was holding before completely standing up, he only wobbled slightly and leaned onto Shiro who had moved to his side in case he fell.   
  
"Thanks bro," He said automatically, wincing a few seconds later. "Sorry-"   
  
"It's fine, if I'm your brother in some reality, I don't mind." Shiro hummed, helping right Akira gently.  He nodded and made sure to grab the reality device thing, he really needed to come up with a name for that thing eventually.   
  
"You kind of woke everyone up and scared everyone with just popping in out of nowhere." Shiro continued, escorting Akira out of the infirmary and down the hall.   
  
"Ah shit, sorry."   
  
"Coran and I were already awake, lecturing Keith for being so reckless on his latest mission. Didn't want to go into the pods, as usual." Shiro groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose.   
  
"Sounds like regular Keith to me" Akira chuckled lightly, feeling a pang in his heart that this wasn't the Keith he knew and was probably much different.   
  
"Good to know Keith is like this in every reality." Shiro snorted. "Oh, everyone is probably also going to be in the lounge, just forewarning. "   
  
"Can't be worse than the massive amount of people in my castle."   
  
Shiro only shrugged and brought Akira into the lounge where the rest of the team was standing, Allura, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Matt, and another guy who Akira didn't recognize all talking amongst themselves. They went quiet as Akira and Shiro entered, watching Akira's every move.   
  
"Uh, hello." Akira said sheepishly, waving his hand slightly. "My name is Akira, I'm not from this... reality, but I know different versions of all of you."   
  
"Shiro," Allura started, completely ignoring Akira's statement. "Are you sure we can trust this man?"   
  
"I'm pretty sure we can, I mean if he wanted to do anything to us he would have done it already."   
  
"But, bringing him to the lounge?"   
  
"Lur' chill," Lance butted in, putting a hand on the princess's shoulder. "If Shiro thinks he's okay, I'm pretty sure the guy is okay."   
  
He turned towards Akira and offered a hand. "Nice to meet you Akira, the name’s Lance, but I guess you knew that already."   
  
Akira nodded and grabbed his hand, shaking it gently. "Thanks, nice to meet you too... this is weird."   
  
"Definitely."   
  
Akira glanced at the others nervously for a second but began to wobble again, only to be steadied by Shiro and quickly shooed over to the couch to sit down.   
  
Once he was situated, the others mumbled quietly to themselves again, a few still not trusting Akira completely. He didn't blame them, he didn't think he would trust someone who just showed up like he did either.   
  
"So Akira," Shiro cleared his throat, making everyone else in the room quiet down. "You want to explain everything to us? Who you are, how you got here?"   
  
"Yeah, sure" Akira sighed, leaning back against the couch. "My name is Akira Shirogane, I'm Shiro's twin brother in a different reality, I'm in the Voltron guard, and an adjunct with the Red lion and her paladins, which are Matt and Keith-"   
  
"Woah woah woah, what?" The guy Akira didn't recognize, objected. His voice sounded similar but it wasn't possible. "Red doesn't have two paladins, none of the lions do! I'm Red's only paladin."   
  
"Keith, calm down." Lance sighed, wrapping an arm around the others waist. "Let him finish."   
  
"Wait a sec, you're Keith!?" Akira practically shouted, staring at the guy he didn't recognize.   
  
"You said you know all of us, but you don't know me!? Of course I'm Keith!"   
  
"There's no way! You're human!"   
  
"Half-human."   
  
"The Keith I know is Galra, like fully Galra."   
  
The team exchanged looks for a second, unsure how to take such a comment.   
  
"With that out of the way," Lance sighed, pushing Keith back a little bit to cool down. "How did you get here?"   
  
"Oh, the Pidge, Matt, and Hunk of my reality were attempting to make a teleporter, I can't remember what for but they exploded a lot of watermelons before I made them go eat since they all missed lunch and dinner."   
  
"How does a teleporter, get you from your reality to ours?" Matt asked, crossing his arms skeptically.   
  
Akira finally got a look at the older Holt's face and balked for a second, expecting the crystals to be littered there. He had to remind himself that these people probably didn't go through the same horror as his group.   
  
"Well, I didn't get to this reality first. First I was dropped in this other reality with this guy named Sven and they had an Altean empire" There was a low groan from several of the paladins, but Akira ignored it for a second. "Then I got dropped into a... very empty.... universe, then I was dropped here."   
  
"I meant how the technology does that."   
  
"Look man," Akira held up his hands. "I am definitely not an engineer, I don't know how it works. There's just coordinates on this device thing that moves me from place to place." He held up the device and offered it to the Holts.  "I've just been guessing coordinates to try and get me home."   
  
"You mind if I take a look at it?" Pidge piped up, taking the device out of Matt's hands and inspecting the alternate version of themselves’ handiwork.   
  
"Go ahead, not like I can make any sense of it." Akira chuckled. "There's a flash drive from the Guns of Gamara guys in there somewhere, It has all their information on Hoktrils in there, since you all groaned at hearing about them, I'm going to assume you know and I don't have to explain."   
  
"Yeah, yeah, we met them" Pidge hummed, not paying attention to anything else that was being said. "I'm gonna go head to my workstation, call me later if you need me."   
  
"You implied that the lions of your reality have two paladins?" Allura asked skeptically, crossing his arms with a raised brow.   
  
"All of them except Blue" Akira hummed, fiddling with the edge of the shirt he was wearing. "Blue has four."   
  
"Hell yeah baby! I knew Blue was special!" Lance cheered.   
  
"Who are these other paladins?" Allura pushed further, ignoring Lance's cheering.   
  
"Black is piloted by you and Takashi" Akira started. "Red is piloted by Matt and Keith, like I said earlier, Green is piloted by Pidge and Ryner, Yellow is piloted by Hunk and Shay, and then Blue is piloted by Lance, Nyma, Val, and Meri."   
  
"Interesting to find out that I'm a paladin in a different reality." Matt commented quietly.   
  
"Oooh, Shay's gonna love to hear this when she wakes up." Hunk bounced.   
  
"My cousin is a paladin!?" Lance gasped "No way."   
  
Allura frowned at Akira, her lips pursed in confusion. "Who's Meri-?"   
  
Akira stifled, feeling something was off in the bond. He knew that he sort of had one with this Keith, but understanding that Matt wasn't a paladin and therefore not having a bond with Red, he was very confused with who this other bond was and why he suddenly felt very worried about their well being.   
  
There was the sound of faint crying coming from the hallway that got louder until there were suddenly two tiny children entering the lounge, one obviously a little boy of altean descent and the other a human looking little girl. The little girl was the one crying and with each wail rising in pitch, Akira found himself wanting to vault himself at the child and protect her from whatever made her cry.   
  
"Dad! Dad!" The little boy panted, leading the girl further into the lounge. "Rose is crying!"   
  
Shiro and Lance were immediately onto the children. Shiro picked up the little boy quickly and let him sit on his hip. Lance scooped up the little girl and held her against his chest, bouncing her slowly.   
  
"Dad, Rose started crying and I helped her!" The little boy gasped excitedly. "I couldn' find anyone at first and I was scared but then I heard you guys talking! And I found you!"   
  
"Good job Myrhin." Shiro smiled softly, kissing the boy’s cheek. "I'm proud of you."   
  
The little boy, Myrhin, giggled and gripped Shiro's shirt, letting out a big yawn a few seconds later.   
  
Lance had moved away from the group, mumbling to the little girl, Rose apparently, and rubbing her back until her cries dissolved into quiet hiccups. He moved back to the group and sighed quietly, still cradling the child against him protectively.   
  
Akira stared at them wildly, both at the children and the adults who had gone to their rescue.   
  
"You guys have kids!?" Akira said, leaning forward to get a better look at the youngsters. "B-but- what!?"   
  
"Daddy, who’s he?" Myrhin asked, gaze switching between Akira and his father.   
  
"His name is Akira, baby." Shiro answered, "He showed up unexpectedly and we're helping him."   
  
Akira still stared at the child and crossed his fingers in front of his mouth, trying to deduce who that child's other parent was.   
  
"I am so confused." He eventually mumbled. "What relationships are going on here? Because I obviously have no idea anymore."   
  
Lance and Shiro gave each other a look before shrugging.   
  
"Keith and I are married." Lance started, backing up against Keith who wrapped an arm around Lance's shoulder. "This is our daughter, Rose."   
  
"Allura and I are also married." Shiro continued, wrapping an arm around Allura. "This is our son, Myrhin."   
  
"This is so weird...."   
  
"Why?" Matt asked, raising an eyebrow.   
  
"I knew about Keith and Lance being a couple thing, but they have barely been dating six months," Akira explained. "Matt and Shiro are dating too, but Allura is with this girl named Meri."   
  
Allura frowned again at the name and leaned into Shiro heavily, crossing her arms tighter.   
  
"Well, Shiro and I are dating, so that’s at least similar" Matt said   
  
"You just said Takashi was married- oooh. Poly?"   
  
"Poly."   
  
"Gotcha." Akira hummed, glancing between the children again. "I'm just wondering how much older you guys are than my team, and how you manage this while dealing with Zarkon and the war."   
  
"Well, I'm twenty four," Lance shrugged. "If that gives you any comparison."   
  
"Wow, seven years..."   
  
"-And Zarkon is dead." Shiro said, accidentally squeezing Myrhin's thigh until he let out a small cry of pain. Shiro gasped and quickly apologized to his son. The child was soon put down and gripped Shiro's pant leg for a second before deciding to go crawl up onto the couch next to Akira.   
  
"Zarkon's dead?" Akira said, unable to comprehend that the greatest villain of the universe was dead. He froze for a second when Myrhin rested his head against Akira's thigh, not exactly knowing what to do and just awkwardly resting his hand on the child's side.   
  
"Seven years ago."   
  
"Hm...." Akira glanced down to the floor, now lost in thought about their lives after the war.   
  
Rose finally pulled her head up from where it rested against Lance's collar, hiccuping quietly with fingers in her mouth. She looked over at Akira and sniffled quietly, making a tiny noise as Lance kissed the side of her head several times.   
  
"Wanna tell me what's wrong Rosie?" Lance asked quietly, still rubbing her back slowly.   
  
"Dweam, scawey, it hurt." She mumbled, rubbing at her eyes with her free hand.   
  
"What hurt?" Rose only pointed to Akira, hiccuping quietly once again. "He hurt?" Rose nodded.   
  
Lance hummed a moment and glanced between Akira and his daughter. "Do you want to go sit next to him to make sure he stops hurting?"   
  
Rose looked at him for a second, those red rimmed violet eyes getting wider at the idea. She nodded slowly and Lance smiled. "You're such a good girl." He mumbled before stepping closer to the couch and depositing his child next to Akira, who froze again and glanced at Rose, letting a long 'uh' fall out of his mouth for probably way too long.   
  
Akira finally got comfortable with the two children sitting next to him and starting to fall asleep. Rose curled up against Akira's side and gripped his borrowed shirt tightly. Myrhin had already fallen asleep a minute or two prior, curled up on Akira's other side and using his thigh as a pillow.   
  
"This is definitely weird... but I'm not objecting." Akira mumbled softly.   
  
After a few minutes of quiet, a question popped into Akira's head, more so a thought than anything else.   
  
"Hey, if it's been seven years since... you defeated Zarkon, did you guys find Sam?"   
  
The team went quiet, the room growing tense with unspoken words and feelings that in no way assured Akira that everything was alright.   
  
"My dad is..." Matt started, gripping his middle tightly as tears welled up in his eyes. Shiro and Allura quickly moved to his side and hugged him tightly.   
  
"We found Commander Holt a few months ago. He died a week later." Shiro finished, fighting back the tears that threatened to fall.   
  
Akira felt his heart stop, staring at Matt. Their Sam was dead, that didn't have to mean his Sam was dead. Lots of things were different, his Sam had to still be alive, he had to be.   
  
Akira gulped and let out a shaky breath, trying not to think the worst had happened with the Commander Holt of his reality.   
  
"I think," Allura sighed. "That it would be a good idea for all of us to go back to bed. You're probably exhausted, Akira. And it probably won't be until tomorrow that Pidge figures out how the device works."   
  
"Yeah..." Akira wasn't actually tired, but after hearing that this reality’s Sam was dead, he just needed a bit of time to process that. "Plus Coran said that my flight suit needed to be washed."   
  
Shiro nodded and stepped over, picking up his sleeping child gently. "I can show you to a guest room if you don't want to sleep in the infirmary."   
  
"That would be appreciated." Akira sighed, struggling for a few seconds to determine how to pick up the remaining child clinging to his side before Keith came over and pulled her off quickly, holding her against his chest protectively. Akira sighed and stood up quickly, glancing at the children for a second before following Shiro out of the room.   
  
Akira watched Myrhin’s sleeping face resting on Shiro's shoulder. He smiled, the kid was cute, definitely related to Shiro.   
  
Shiro lead them to a nearby room and opened the door, looking over at Akira. "It's nothing special but you're welcome to sleep there for the night."   
  
"Thanks." Akira sighed, walking in slowly and barely giving the room a once over. "See you in the morning."   
  
"See you in the morning Akira."   
  
Akira sighed as the door shut and left him alone in the darkness. He moved and sat on the bed, pulling off the borrowed shirt and his binder before pulling the shirt back on. He let out a deep breath and flopped back against the bed, staring at the ceiling.   
  
"I hope the others aren't too worried about me" Akira mumbled quietly before rolling over in the bed and falling asleep within a few minutes. 

* * *

When the morning came, Akira groaned and started to pull himself up, only stopping as he felt something clutching his chest. He froze and looked down, letting out a confused noise as he saw Rose curled up against him.   
  
"Why, how, and when, did you get in here." Akira mumbled quietly, gently running his fingers through her hair. He sighed softly and pulled away the best he could without waking up the young child. He quickly pulled his binder back on and scooped up the still sleeping child, now realizing that she was wearing a Red Lion onesie, which he found was too adorable for words.   
  
"Let's just hope I don't get murdered when I walk into the kitchen with you." He chuckled, holding her with one arm as he opened the door and started to walk out.   
  
"Ngh... hi..." Rose mumbled against Akira's shoulder, yawning slowly. She pushed herself up a little bit and gripped his shirt tightly to keep herself steady.   
  
"Well good morning sleepyhead." Akira hummed, meeting the child's gaze who quickly looked away, glancing around the hallway. "Why did you come into my room last night?"   
  
"You was hurting... so I help." Rose yawned. "You soft." she leaned back down, resting her body against Akira's and her head pressed against his neck.   
  
"I'm soft?"   
  
"Mhn... comfy."   
  
Akira only shrugged at the comment and walked into the kitchen where he found most of the other's up already. The smell of pancakes coming from the table and the stove where Hunk was making another batch.   
"Good morning." Akira said as he crossed the entrance into the kitchen.     
  
"Well that's where she went." Lance mumbled, putting another piece of pancake in his mouth. "Gotta text Keith now."   
  
Akira walked over and looked at the table full of pancakes, humming softly. He took the seat next to Lance and attempting to pull Rose off of him, mostly succeeded but now had the child just sitting in his lap.   
  
"Keith didn't believe me when I said that she crawled into your room." Lance hummed, grabbing two plates and putting one in front of Akira and the other right next to it. "You like pancakes?"   
  
"Pancakes are cool."   
  
Lance nodded and pulled a couple of the pancakes onto the one plate and a singular one onto the other plate.   
  
Keith came running by the entrance and paused after he bolted in, panting heavily. Rose looked over and gasped happily.   
  
"Daddy!" She giggled and raised her arms out, wiggling in Akira's hold. Keith came over and snatched her up, moving to sit in the seat on the other side of Lance with Rose in his lap. Lance only sighed and rubbed his forehead. He handed the plate for Rose over to Keith and grabbed the syrup for himself.   
  
Akira wondered if this was normal for them, minus the stranger from another reality being there of course.   
  
"So," Akira started awkwardly, poking at his pancakes. "Do you think Pidge made any breakthroughs?"   
  
"Well," Shiro yawned, reaching over to stop Myrhin from dumping just syrup all over his plate. "I found them still awake and working this morning, so I don't think they figured out anything yet. They'll probably figure something out by the end of the day."   
  
"That's good, I'll go talk to them later I guess." Akira hummed, starting to bounce his leg under the table.   
  
The others seemed to finish up their breakfast quickly, which only left Akira sitting at the table with Allura.   
  
"Akira." Allura said. "May I ask you a question?"   
  
"Yeah, sure."   
  
"Who is this Meri that you kept mentioning?"   
  
Akira froze for a second, trying to figure out how to explain their relationship and who Meri exactly was. He gnawed on his lip for a couple second before explaining.   
  
"Meri is an Altean girl that you used to date back on Altea and then when you found her ten thousand years and some months later, you guys got back together. She's a blue paladin like I said yesterday, she trained under the previous paladin Lealle, who by this point I'm going to guess wasn't your mother, but she's saved my life several times and was a spy at the garrison. She's how Blue got to earth, and she ended up finding Lance when he was a kid and babysat him a lot since she knew that Blue would choose him as her next paladin."   
  
"You talk as though there's a long line of paladins."   
  
"Yeah? There's been thousands of years worth of paladins. The lions are ancient as hell."   
  
"Really? My father built the Lions himself, in this reality." Allura hummed, resting her chin on her fist. "But I guess that the alternate version of me had a very special relationship with Meri, I'm sorry to say I've never heard of her."   
  
"Yeah, definitely." Akira smiled before slowly standing up. "I'm gonna go talk to Pidge and see if I can help with anything, also go see if my flight suit was washed."   
  
Allura nodded and waved to Akira as he walked out of the kitchen.   
  
The halls were quiet as he walked down, unsure of where he would find Coran.   
  
Akira hadn't realized how much actually taking a break and getting the rest he needed actually helped him, especially with the horror and terror he had felt in the previous reality. As much as he desperately wanted to get home, he was fine with taking a break in this reality for a while. Anyone could probably tell he needed it.   
  
He found Coran in the infirmary scrubbing down one of the examination tables, looking deep in thought as he methodically cleaned the table.   
  
"Uh, hey Coran."   
  
The older altean pulled away and looked over at Akira, a smile pulling onto his face. "Hello there Akira, need something?"   
  
"I was just wondering if my flight suited got cleaned, or if I need to go clean it." Akira said. "As much as I'm okay with borrowing clothes, I would like to get my flight suit back for when I leave."   
  
"Ah! Yes, your flight suit should be coming out of the dryer any minute now, do you need me to show you where it is?"   
  
"No, I got it. Thanks Coran," Akira smiled and walked out, finding the laundry room with relative ease. He sighed and tucked the warm garment under his arm before heading towards the Green Lion's hangar. It made most sense for Pidge to have their workstation there, and since his version of Pidge had it there, he could only assume that this one had theirs there too.   
  
Akira hummed and glanced inside the hangar, looking around until he found the workstation tucked away in the corner of the room.   
  
"Hey Pidge." He said as he came up to it, looking down at the green paladin who looked deep in thought as they fiddled around with the device and jotted down notes. They didn't register his presence for a few minutes which gave him time to really get a look at the multitude of scars that littered the left side of their face and body.   
  
After another minute of not being noticed, Akira reached out and touched Pidge's shoulder gently, getting their attention. They jumped at the touch and flailed for a second, accidentally launching their pen into the air. Once they saw Akira they sighed and let their head drop to the table, letting out a deep sigh.   
  
"Warn a guy, wouldja?" They mumbled, pushing themself up and fully looking at Akira.   
  
"I did call your name."   
  
"I'm mostly deaf in my left ear."   
  
"Oh, sorry."   
  
"It's fine." Pidge waved off the apology. "Did you need something?"   
  
"I just came to see if you had any breakthroughs or needed some help." Akira said, pulling a stool over and sitting next to the paladin’s workstation.   
  
"I'm on the track to figuring out what the code is, well sort of" They explained, lifting up their notebook. "I can tell that each of these letters and numbers are a variable, but what they are a variable for, I couldn't tell you. There's no way that these coordinates are like actual X-Y-Z coordinates, so how the other version of me came up with them and thought that they would work for only teleporting locations, I have no fucking idea."   
  
"That... makes sense."   
  
"I don't know much about your reality and it looks like there isn't a set of coordinates for your reality so I can't compare the two and see what's different. I do have the... mirror reality? I don't know what to call it, but I have the coordinates for their reality and it's only a bunch of zero's which doesn't give me much."   
  
Akira nodded along, mostly understanding what they were saying. "So you...-?"   
  
"So I don't have much I can go on and could only give you a random guess at what the appropriate coordinates should be and there's little chance in that actually working."   
  
"Well, it would hopefully send me to another reality where there would be another version of you and the rest of the paladins and they could probably compare the multiple coordinates and make a better guess."   
  
"That is how science works." Pidge laughed. "Give me a couple more hours in trying to figure this out before sending you out on a wild goose chase again. Also I copied over the Guns of Gamara information, I'll help look into that when I get the chance, if you ever come back through here with that gadget, we can probably help the gamara and the rest of those citizens..."   
  
"Yeah, that might be a thing to think about." Akira sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't know what do go do now."   
  
"Go bother Lance or Keith, they're always doing something."   
  
"Somehow I don't think Keith likes me."   
  
"That would make sense, he is insanely protective of Rose and doesn't always do well with strangers coming on the ship."   
  
Akira nodded, thinking to himself quietly. Though eventually he just sighed and leaned back. "Any idea where I can find Lance?"   
  
"Probably the lounge or the nursery."   
  
"Alright, I'll see you later then Pidge."   
  
"Later Akira."   
  
Akira walked out of the hangar and decided to head towards the lounge first, he knew it was on the way to the nursery so either way he would be passing it. It seemed that Lance was not in the lounge when he passed so he found his way to the nursery pretty quickly. He had never actually been in this room of the castle on his own time or in his own reality so it was a bit of a struggle to find it.   
  
He found Lance inside the nursery with both the children, who seemed to be watching a children's show while Lance read a book in the nearby couch. Akira made his way over and sat down next to Lance, glancing between the children and the book.   
  
Lance flipped the page and put his bookmark into the pages, closing it quickly before he looked at Akira.   
  
"I'm guessing you're bored?"   
  
"More or less, Pidge hasn't found anything yet and probably won't." Akira shrugged. "They want to check out a few more things before they send me out with coordinates that probably won't work on sending me home."   
  
Lance nodded and hummed quietly. "Well I’m not doing anything for a while either, Keith is going to be coming over in about an hour to switch with me on babysitting duty."   
  
"Keith has babysitting duty?"   
  
"He's not the best at it but he tries." Lance sighed with a smile. "Though it has resulted in him losing his baby privileges more than a few times."   
  
"...do I want to know?"   
  
"He decided that it would be a good idea to train while he just left Rose on a mat, without a barrier or anything mind you, without anyone else in the room."   
  
"Oh no."   
  
"And then there was the time that Rose somehow got a hold of his bayard and activated it, even though it turned into a rattle. That was a weird experience."   
  
"Oh."   
  
"And THEN there was the time I had to chop off a good portion of his hair because he got stuff stuck in it from a mission he went on, and Rose hadn't seen him in like two weeks and absolutely rejected him for about an hour until she recognized him."   
  
"That's so sad."   
  
"It was more funny than anything." Lance chuckled, shifting on the couch to face Akira better.   
  
"Keith is basically my brother back in my reality and it kind of hurts that he basically hates me here." Akira sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.   
  
"Oh he doesn't hate you, he's just defensive and guarded." Lance sighed, resting a hand on the others shoulder. "I would be too considering his past. I would tell you but his story isn't mine to tell."   
  
Akira nodded, completely understanding. "There's so much that's different here, it’s just jarring."   
  
"Sorry about that, hopefully you can get home soon."   
  
"Yeah, I hope so too."   
  
They fell into a comfortable silence for a little while, casually listening to the children’s cartoon while the children started play with their stuffed animals.   
  
Akira hadn't realized how much time had passed until Pidge was calling for him over the intercom, and everyone else for that matter. Akira took it to mean that they had decided on a set of coordinates to send him out on. So before he headed down to the hangar, he stopped to change back into his flight suit and put away the borrowed clothes.   
  
Rose had demanded to be picked up by him as he came out and Akira didn't really object, carrying the child down to the hangar with the others where Pidge was waiting for him with the device all set up.   
  
Reluctantly, Akira handed Rose back over to Lance and picked up the device from Pidge, sliding it onto his arm with ease.   
  
"I added a set of notes to the flash drive for whatever Pidge you meet in the next reality so they can get a head start on sending you home."   
  
"Thanks Pidge, so I guess this is you guys kicking me out?" He joked, looking to the others with a smile.   
  
"Well we’re not kicking you out but yeah, sending you forward." Matt chuckled.   
  
"Thanks for not murdering me when I showed up."   
  
"You're welcome." Shiro smiled.   
  
"Bye bye?" Rose asked quietly, looking to Akira sadly. He felt a pang in his chest at those wide eyes the child gave him.   
  
"Sorry sweetie, but yeah. This is bye bye." Akira said quietly, taking her hand softly. Tears welled up in the child's eyes as she kind of launched herself at Akira while still being held by Lance. She clutched the flight suit the best her tiny hands could and hiccuped softly.   
  
"No more hurt," Rose said. "I miss you."   
  
Akira sighed quietly and patted her head softly, pushing her away slowly.   
  
"I won't hurt anymore, promise" He smiled to her and backed up, hand hovering over the button that would send him away. "Bye guys, I might see you again some time."   
  
The others waved to him as he pressed the button, but he couldn't help but watch Rose as the particles enveloped him and soon blocked his sight, leaving him in a flash of blue, then darkness.


	5. Z2A2P6A2C1S1K2L1P1H2S1M34T2L5M3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Bird posting this for once, aha.  
> Anyway, Warnings for this chapter include;  
> Clones, Death of said clones, Character Death, Verbal abuse, A fight, limb removal, canon typical violence.
> 
> If you're sensitive to suffocatuon/asphyxiation in particular, you may want to skip part of the first scene. Stop reading at "Just breathe" and skip down to "I'll be back."

When Akira opened his eyes, he found himself staring down at empty air.

He cursed, shoving himself backwards away from the edge, but only managed to wind himself as his back slammed against a thin metal railing. A glance showed him another dizzying drop: a sparse network of catwalks, circular platforms, and row upon row of large glass cylinders. Below that, nothing but clouds, and alien mountains far below.

Akira reached up to grab the railing above his head, forcing himself to breath through the adrenaline rush. If he'd ever been afraid of heights, flying with his dad as a little kid had taken care of that; it was just the shock of waking in such a precarious position that had him shaking. He was fine.

Where was he? That was the first question. It wasn't the castle-ship, or anything else of Altean design. The low-level purple lighting suggested Galra, but he'd never seen anything quite like this in Zarkon's fleet.

Those pods didn't bode well, though. Too much like cryopods, in much too sinister a structure.

Akira waited for his stomach to settle, then waited a few seconds longer for his hands to stop shaking. He still didn't want to get up and find out whether this was, as it seemed, an Imperial research lab, but sitting around letting his imagination fill in the gaps wasn't going to get him home.

At least he could take comfort in knowing that this wasn't anything his team had to deal with. Probably. Hopefully.

The last jump had landed him close to the paladins, and he trusted Pidge's analysis enough to hope that the same held true here. Only problem was, he didn't see anyone around. Not any druids or sentries, and certainly not any paladins.

"Okay, Akira," he muttered, pulling himself up by the railing. It swayed with his weight enough to raise concerns about its structural integrity. "One thing at a time."

First priority: figure out where he was, and if it was safe. If it wasn't, he could always change a random digit or two of the coordinates and see where it took him. But if there wasn't any immediate danger, then he could move onto finding the paladins and hopefully getting closer to the coordinates he actually wanted.

Once he was moving, it was easier. He forgot about the fall waiting a single misplaced step away and about the rickety railings. It was harder to forget about what, or _who_ , he would find inside the pods, and he slowed as he neared the steps at the end of this catwalk. They led up to a larger platform edged with two lines of pods.

He didn't like this.

He hadn't liked first first glimpse of them, and he didn't like them any better when he was standing right in front of them, staring down a perfectly human-sized glass cylinder. It didn't take a psychic to guess what he'd find inside.

Akira didn't know if it was fate that drew him to that one particular container, three in from the left side, fate or some echo of the lion bonds. Maybe it was just coincidence that when he wiped the condensation off the outside of the pod, it was Takashi's face staring back at him.

He froze, his heart lodged in his throat. That was Takashi. Takashi frozen and helpless in a Galra lab, stranded here for who knew how long, forgotten. Wasting away. Had he been here since Kerberos? His hair was still black throughout, and there was no scar and no prosthetic arm. He must never have been to the Arena in this reality.

That didn't mean he hadn't suffered. Akira had more than enough proof of the many and varied ways the Empire could make their prisoners suffer.

He felt sick, and turned at once to search for a control panel that would release Takashi from his pod. Akira still didn't know where he was or how to get somewhere safe, but he'd be damned if he left his brother here for even one second more than necessary. He'd rip the railing right off the catwalk and smash the glass in himself if that's what it took.

His eyes caught on the other pods as he searched, and his stomach twisted again. Each of these was another prisoner, another victim. Each of them deserved freedom. Just because they weren't his brother didn't mean he didn't owe them whatever help he could offer.

He felt a tug in his gut, urgent and irresistible, but he still didn't see a control panel anywhere nearby. He could waste more time looking, or he could bust Takashi out and hope he could fill in some of the blanks.

(It wasn't really a question, in the end. Takashi would always come first.)

Three solid yanks were enough to rip a section of railing free, and he swung for the glass with all his strength, cringing with each sharp crack that rang out. If anyone was stationed here--any guards, or druids, or sentries--they couldn't ignore the racket he was making, and Akira was painfully aware that he was unarmed, except for the slender metal pole that bent a little more with each strike.

Let them come.

He'd fight them all barehanded if he had to.

He kept swinging, the urgent tug in the back of his mind growing stronger with each passing second, but the area remained empty. The Empire must have deserted this lab, leaving the prisoners to die as the machinery shut down. It was a chilling thought, and Akira promised himself he would find a way to help the rest of these people before he moved on, but for now--

The glass shattered with one last, desperate swing, and Akira stumbled back, the ruined pole falling from bloodied fingers. Takashi remained upright in the pod for a moment, then took a single, shuddering breath and pitched forward. Akira caught him, straining under his weight, and they sank together to the floor among the shattered glass.

"Takashi?" Akira asked, checking his pulse--steady--and then reaching up to brush his hair out of his eyes. "Takashi, can you hear me?"

Takashi stirred, his next breath deep and strained, his chest heaving like his entire body was trying just to draw in air. His eyes flew open, darting around in a panic. Akira rubbed his arm, slow and soothing.

"It's okay, Takashi. You're safe. You're okay. I'm right here. Just breathe."

He was trying, Akira could tell, gasping for air but not getting enough. He grabbed Akira's wrist in a vicelike grip with his right hand--his right hand, which looked so thin and frail, and _god_ he looked so young like this. Young and scared, and Akira didn't even know what was wrong or how he could fix it. He tried to help him sit up, to get him to calm down and breathe, but it very quickly became clear that the problem wasn't the panic itself. Gasping turned to a wracking cough, and then even that tapered off.

"Fuck," Akira whispered, as Takashi began to fade. "No, no, fuck. Don't do this to me, Takashi. Breathe. Come on, _breathe_." He fumbled to check Takashi's collar and felt his pulse racing beneath his touch, fluttering too quick and fading too fast. He reached back desperately, searching for any scrap of useful information, any first aid seminar or informational poster that might give him the slightest clue what to do to help, but it was too late, and Akira didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

He wasn't breathing.

He wasn't breathing, he wasn't responding, and then Akira couldn't find a pulse, either, and even if Akira knew CPR there was no one here to help, no castle with cryopods to fix whatever was wrong with him.

He was gone.

Akira's eyes burned, but something yanked at him, sharp and insistent, and pounding with impatience.

And then it clicked.

Keith, or Matt, or maybe both of them.

Akira didn't know how Takashi had ended up here, but if he was here, then odds were high that he wasn't the only one. Either he'd been taken with the rest of the crew of the _Persephone_ , or he'd been taken because he was a paladin of Voltron, and either way _someone_ needed Akira desperately.

He lay Takashi down, wiping away tears. "I'll be back," he promised, knowing it wouldn't make a difference. His brother was dead. Walking away felt like ripping his heart out of his chest, but whoever needed him needed him now. They might not have to die.

He turned, the pain an unbearable weight on his chest, and followed the tug in his chest.

As he ran, it became clear that he was not as alone here as he'd thought. The station was powering up, lights flickering on in each of the pods, a wave of violet light that raced toward him, revealing a hundred copies of Takashi, each of them as young and helpless as the one who'd died in Akira's arms.

His steps faltered when he saw the clones--that's what they were, wasn't it? _Fuck._ Akira wanted to find Haggar or whoever else was behind this place and rip their head off, but he didn't have the time. The unseen threat dragged him onward on numb feet, and even the horror yielded to the cold focus of battle as someone came flying off one of the upper platforms--thrown, or kicked, given their momentum.

They hit a level above Akira, and Akira recognize the red paladin armor a split second before Takashi followed him down, arm blazing.

Takashi? Or another clone?

Did it matter?

Akira had heard the stories of Haggar's mind control. She'd caught Takashi and Allura both and had forced them to fight the rest of the team. Akira hadn't been around for that, but even hearing it second-hand, it wasn't the sort of thing you forgot. He wasn't ready to lay money on this reality following the same path as his own, not with so many examples to the contrary, but it seemed plausible enough. Nothing else in any universe could make Takashi fight Keith _or_ Matt.

The fight didn't linger in one place for long, and Akira spun, searching for a way down to the platform where they'd ended up. Takashi had a sword now, luminous and translucent and seemingly projected from his prosthetic arm, and the red paladin parried with a blade Akira didn't recognize. Takashi had knocked his opponent's helmet off, revealing a head of dark hair. Keith, then. He was human, but he'd looked human in the last reality, too, and Akira's gut said this was someone he knew.

He leaped the last level, vaulting over the catwalk railing and rolling to absorb the impact on the platform below. Keith and Takashi were close now, dodging among the scaffolding and pod banks until a section of scaffolding collapsed between them. Voices rose through the silence that followed, Keith's pleading, Takashi's cold.

"I should have abandoned you, just like your parents did,” Takashi snarled. “They saw that you were broken. Worthless. I should have seen it too."

Akira snatched up a severed steel pipe lying among the wreckage. "Fuck, you, too, Haggar," he said, swinging for Takashi's shoulder. He spun, catching the bar with his prosthetic hand. They struggled for a moment, Akira trying to hold onto his only weapon, but Takashi was stronger. He ripped the bar out of Akira's hands and flung it off the edge of the platform.

His lip curled as he stared Akira down, and Akira's stomach turned over. This was not his brother--not under his own power. Akira had seen Takashi angry. He'd seen him in the middle of battle, when everything else dropped away, leaving behind nothing but raw survival instinct.

But he'd never seen his brother look like this--cold and disdainful, like everyone around him was a mosquito buzzing in his ear. Akira's heart pounded in his chest as he backed away, keenly aware that he was once more unarmed, and that he couldn't match his brother in hand-to-hand combat, even if he didn't consider Takashi's sword.

Akira's back hit the railing, and he glanced back, hoping some twist of luck had put him above another platform he might escape to, but all he saw was a few wispy clouds and the ground far, far below.

Then Keith was there, forcing Takashi away with a vicious strike that might well have been intended to kill. Keith hesitated for a moment, eyeing Akira warily.

"I'm a friend," Akira said quickly, holding up his hands to show that he was unarmed.

Keith's eyes narrowed, but there wasn't time to argue. Takashi was back, and Keith had to focus all his attention on fending him off. Akira couldn't say how long they'd been at this, but Keith was winded, his parries just a hair too slow. Akira hung back, afraid that if he tried to help he'd only get in Keith's way. He couldn't have known when he signed up as a guinea pig that he'd be thrown into battle, but he still cursed himself for not bringing his pistol along.

Well, he might not be able to fight, but he at least had information to offer, and he might be able to provide a distraction. The next time Keith and Takashi backed away from each other, Akira caught Keith by the elbow.

"Go for the arm," he said. "If Haggar's behind this, she's probably controlling him through there."

Keith shot him a look, then turned back to Takashi, and Akira knew he was weighing his options. Trust a total stranger? Or trust his own gut? Maybe he had a plan already, in which case, more power to him. He probably wasn't running off second-hand information from another reality. But if his plan was to hope he didn't have to kill his best friend, then destroying a prosthetic arm that was also his opponent's only weapon, so far as Akira could tell...

It might be a risk worth taking.

Keith nodded, apparently reaching the same conclusion. "You should stay clear. I'm not going to be able to hold back against him."

Akira snorted. "Believe me, I know." His eyes landed on a computer terminal on a platform not far away. "Actually--I might be able to give you a distraction."

He waited only a moment, and then once Keith and Takashi were at it again, Akira took off at a sprint, vaulting stairs to get down to the computer terminal. He wasn't even sure he would be able to use the computer; half the Empire's terminals were species-locked. But the screen lit up at his touch, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he scanned the directory in search of something useful. At first glance all he saw was administrative files and supply logs, and a deeper dive brought up research notes with titles that turned his stomach. _Operation Kuron_ was telling enough on its own without going into the side effects or logs of "decommissioned" subjects.

What he needed was a self-destruct button, preferably big, red, and obvious, with no safety measures in place to prevent an accidental detonation. The best he could do for the other clones here was give them a merciful death. Better than dying alone and in fear or becoming yet more puppets for Haggar to use as she pleased. That failing, he'd take any system controls he could find. The entire lab seemed to be in low orbit, so if he could mess with the engines or power supply--and if he could figure out where there might be escape pods on this floating hellscape, so much the better.

He'd just found a map of the base when a laser beam tore a three-foot gash through the platform a hundred feet away. It cut upward, tearing through steel and glass like butter, and Akira grabbed onto the computer as the floor shook beneath his feet. Maybe he should bump the escape route up on his list of priorities and forget about the self-destruct. It seemed someone had that part covered already.

Another laser tore through the upper reaches of the station, and chunks of metal rained down around Akira, taking out massive sections of catwalk and whole banks of pods.

(A quick death was better than the alternative. Akira had to remember that.)

There were shuttles docked at the very bottom of the station and alarms blaring for more systems than Akira could count. The floor was noticeably tilted by now, whole sections of station dark as the mayhem disrupted the power flow.

Time to go. Akira ran, holding the map of the station in his mind. If he could get a shuttle, circle back around to where the fight was happening, he'd-- He'd _what?_ Shoot Takashi to save Keith? Could he make that choice?

The station was crumbling in earnest now, whole blocks of the structure crumbling away. Light flashed somewhere far below, on the last platform at the very bottom of the station. How the hell had they gotten all the way down there?

No time to ask questions. The falling debris was snagging on support cables, ripping them off their connections. The platform where Keith and Takashi were was already slanting, its pitch increasing with every passing second. If Akira went for a shuttle now, there might not be anyone left to save. But if he went down there and couldn't pull them to safety, they were all screwed.

Another cable snapped, and Akira made his decision. He leaped off the catwalk, grabbing onto the loose cables that flapped in the wind, and careened down toward the listing platform below, letting go when he ran out of cable and grabbing onto the edge of the platform, now vertical, as he reached out for Keith's hand.

They caught, the combined weight of Keith and Takashi wrenching Akira's shoulder, but he held on, biting down on a scream. Not this time. He wasn't losing Takashi again. Takashi dangled, unconscious, from Keith's grip, and Akira knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their grip. His perch wasn't any more sure than Keith's, but he'd be damned if he let his brothers fall.

He wondered, as his hold on the station began to fail, whether the teleporter could carry more than one person. Ripping these two out of their reality wouldn't be ideal, but it wouldn't be any worse than all three of them dying here.

Hell, Akira didn't know what the rest of this universe was like. Maybe taking them away and giving them a fresh start would be a mercy.

It was a last resort, and one he was coming up on very quickly. He was slipping, and the strain showed on Keith's face as he tried to hold onto both Akira and Takashi. Then they were falling, and Akira tried to bring his arm around to where he could input new coordinates and initiate a jump, but it wasn't easy to do while free falling amidst the wreckage of an Imperial research station and trying not to lose track of Keith.

A lion roared, and Akira momentarily blacked out as he hit something solid, rolled, and slammed into a wall. When his head cleared, his chest ached, and each breath only sparked a new twinge. But he was in one piece--rattled and bruised, but not actually _hurt_ \--and that was more than he'd honestly expected. He also hadn't expected to be inside the Black Lion. He might have expected Red; he'd sensed her ever since he got here, if only distantly, and she was clearly worried about Keith.

Not that Akira was complaining.

Keith lay nearby, still out cold, and Akira checked him over for injuries. Head injuries especially, since he'd lost his helmet in the fight. He seemed okay--breathing fine, with a steady pulse.

Akira really needed to brush up on his first aid if things were going to keep going like this.

But Keith seemed fine for now, aside from getting knocked out in the fall, and Akira moved on to Takashi, who also hadn't moved since Akira came to. His right arm was gone, severed just below the shoulder, which was now covered in twisted metal that gave off a sickening amethyst glow. His armor was scuffed and dented, his jaw darkened by an ugly bruise, and the circles beneath his eyes stood out a vibrant purple against his sickly pallor. He stirred as Akira felt for a pulse, brows drawing together, and Akira automatically pulled back, panic freezing him in place.

He wasn't dying. Whatever had happened, whatever Haggar had done to him, he wasn't dying. His breath was maybe a little bit shallow, but it was steady, and he wasn't gasping like that clone had been. (The other clone? Fuck, Akira didn't know what to think anymore.)

After a few seconds passed with no signs that Takashi was going to either die or return to the crazed violence of before, Akira ventured closer, sitting down against the wall, and cautiously reached out to touch his brother's shoulder.

"Takashi?" Akira asked. "Can you hear me?"

His face screwed up for a moment, and then hazy eyes opened, scanning the ramp for the source of the voice. His gaze found Akira and stuck, a slight frown touching his mouth.

"I'm Akira," he said before Takashi could try to make himself talk. "You probably don't know me, but in another reality, I'm your brother."

Takashi seemed skeptical, but a wave of something--of pain, or vertigo, maybe--swept through him. He screwed his eyes shut, head lolling, and Akira reacted instinctively, pulling Takashi's head into his lap. Only once he'd done so did he stop to think that it might seem weird to someone who'd never even met Akira before today.

Sure enough, when Takashi opened his eyes again, he seemed confused, but he didn't protest. Maybe he didn't have the energy--he didn't seem to be all there right now, his eyes staring at something out of Akira's sight, his breath sometimes simply stopping for a moment, like he had to remind himself to keep breathing.

"Keith...?"

Akira gave a start at the voice, so weak it hardly sounded like Takashi. He turned his head, searching for Keith, and Akira helped him to sit up enough to see Keith, still sprawled across the ramp several feet away. Takashi breathed in, then slumped against Akira's shoulder. Akira didn't like how little energy he had.

"Tell him... I'm sorry."

Akira's arms tightened around his shoulders, and his mind whited out in a roar of denial. He wasn't dying. Akira wasn't watching his brother die _again_. "Tell him yourself," he snapped. "You're both going to be fine."

Takashi's lip twitched, and his eyes slipped closed. "I never wanted this."

"I know. You love this team. You would never hurt them."

"I did." Takashi trailed off, breathing out a long, slow sigh. He didn't breathe in again until Akira shook his shoulder, and even then it was too thin. He was too tired. "I think I'm dying."

"No, you're not." Akira's stomach curled as his sharp tone made Takashi flinch, and he tried to stamp out his anger. This wasn't Takashi fault. None of it. "You're not dying. Stop talking like that. We're going to get you back to the castle, we're going to put you in a pod, and you're going to be fine."

A minute shake of the head was his only answer. "Should've just left me. Be easier for you."

"I'm not going to leave you. You're my brother."

"No." His voice had dropped to a whisper, and Akira had to lean in to hear it. "I'm not him. I never was."

Akira's throat constricted. "I didn't say you were Takashi. I said you were my brother, and you are. Now shut up. You need to save your strength."

Takashi--or the clone, or whoever he was--stared up at Akira, seemingly stunned. His face crumpled, and he quickly hid it in Akira's shoulder, but not before Akira noticed the tears gathering at the corner of his eyes. Akira's mouth ran dry, but he said nothing as he held his brother close and let him cry.

Seriously, _fuck_ Haggar.

"It's going to be okay," Akira whispered. His brother had gone still by now except for shallow, uneven breaths, and Akira didn't know if he was even still conscious. He kept talking anyway, slipping into Japanese when he ran out of words in English. He would stay here, and hold his brother, and reassure him, for as long as it took. It was the only thing he could do.

Keith woke with a gasp only a few moments later, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment before he realized where he was and turned to find Akira holding his brother.

"That's not the real Shiro," Keith said cautiously, picking himself up off the floor. He was unsteady on his feet, and he leaned heavily on the wall, hissing in pain.

Akira swallowed the lump in his throat. "I don't care."

Keith stared at him, bewildered, and Akira supposed that was fair. There had been no time to explain, no chance to tell Keith who he was or why he wanted to see them both safe.

"He's a victim here," Akira said, "not the enemy." It was only a fragment of an explanation, but it was the simplest, and Keith visibly flinched when he heard it.

"I know. I'm not-- I don't blame him. I just thought you should know. If you came here to save Shiro, you're too late. He died months ago."

The bottom dropped out of Akira's stomach. "What?"

"Yeah." Keith shoved off the wall and past Akira, sparing a single pained look for the dying man in his lap. "I didn't know either."

He didn't stay to explain more, but maybe that was for the best. Akira had already watched his brother die once, and he feared he was about to watch it happen a second time. He didn't want to hear any more details of all the ways this universe had fucked over Takashi Shirogane.

Akira bowed his head, hugging his brother close and doing his best to shield him from the rest of the world. "Hold on," he whispered. "Just hold on for me."

-

The fight wasn't over. Akira stayed where he was as his brother's breathing grew shallower and shallower, so he couldn't see what was happening outside, but Keith's muttered curses and the growing urgency from the adjunct bond told Akira enough. Part of him wanted to fight, but the rest of him just wanted to take his brother and hide away from the machinations of Zarkon's empire.

_He's suffered enough already. At least let him die in peace._

He didn't protest when Keith ordered him into the Black Lion's emergency pod with his brother's lifeless body, and his heart almost stopped from sheer relief when he spotted the castle-ship through the pod's viewscreen. Coran met them in the hangar, along with two people Akira didn't know, one Altean and one Galra.

"What happened?" Coran asked. "Who are you?"

"Akira. And I don't know. There were clones, and Takashi... He's...." Akira couldn't force the word out, but Coran's eyes were sympathetic as he took charge, whisking Akira's brother off to the pods. Akira trailed after in a daze, his head spinning and his stomach heaving with each muted cry on the comms that spoke to the battle raging outside. Akira should be out there. He should be helping.

He also knew himself well enough to know that going out there right now, even _if_ this castle had guard ships and this Coran would let him fly them, would only get Akira killed. He went instead to the pod room, ignoring Coran's insistence that he sit down and rest, and took up post beside his brother's pod, watching the slow decline of his vitals.

"Is he...?"

Coran looked up, his face grim. "Not yet, but I'll be honest. It doesn't look good. Whatever happened to him out there, it's affected his Quintessence. Ah..." He paused, eyeing Akira. "That is to say--"

"I know about Quintessence," Akira said. He knew enough, anyway. "He's dying."

Coran squeezed his shoulder. "I take it you knew him."

 _Knew._ Akira's eyes burned. If Coran was already talking about him in the past tense, then it was worse than Akira had realized. "Sort of. It's a long story."

Coran nodded. "Later, then. I need to get up to the bridge in case the paladins need me."

Akira looked up, panic closing in around his throat, but Coran, as always, saw right through him. "Stay," he say. "Take all the time you need."

-

Closure.

Coran was kind to give Akira that opportunity, but he couldn't possibly know that it was a futile effort. This wasn't Akira's home, this wasn't Akira's family. He hadn't known the dying man--either Takashi or the clone, who seemed to have been with this team for some time. There was no saying goodbye now, and even if he'd had that chance, what good would it have done? Akira would be leaving soon, off to another universe where Takashi might be alive, or might be dead, and either way would not be the Takashi Akira knew.

So it just festered. Pain and guilt and a sickening desire to run away, to just plug new coordinates-- _any_ coordinates--into the teleporter and get away. Anywhere would be better than here.

He stayed only because his brother wasn't yet gone, and no matter which reality this was, Akira couldn't leave his brother to die alone. ( _And what about all the other clones?_ he asked himself. What about the dozens of other innocents Akira had left to their fate?)

The battle ended at some point, and Coran came to say they needed to evacuate the castle, but still Akira lingered by his brother's pod. He guarded it from within the Black Lion's cockpit while the others salvaged what they could of their home, and when Keith returned with the Galra woman and an enormous wolf, Akira stared him down and wrapped a protective arm around the pod.

Keith's eyes softened, and he nodded before going to seat himself behind the controls of the Black Lion. It was a long, quiet flight, Keith and the Galra woman huddled together at the front of the cockpit, the wolf staring at Akira with an unblinking gaze. He had, until now, at least had the comfort of watching his brother's breath fog the glass above him, but Keith had asked Coran to put him into stasis before they left--a decision he'd come to after a brief, hushed conversation with Allura, and not one he seemed inclined to discuss with the rest of the team, much less Akira.

Fair enough. Akira was the outsider here, not technically the patient's brother by any measure; he had no right to demand a say in his treatment. It still grated on his already frazzled nerves, and he opted not to try to insert himself into the discussion happening over the comms.

He didn't get involved, but he watched, and he listened, and he pieced together a patchwork understanding of the state of affairs in this universe. Like the last one, each lion had only a single paladin, though only Hunk and Pidge flew the same lions as their counterparts in Akira's home universe. Keith flew Black, Lance Red, and Allura Blue--despite Keith wearing the red armor and Lance the blue. Allura had pink paladin armor, which Akira was entirely too tired to figure out.

Haggar was still a threat in this reality--the primary one, it seemed, though Akira wasn't sure if that was because Zarkon had already been defeated, or because he'd never existed. And these paladins had rallied a coalition to fight with them, including Kolivan, Matt, and--apparently, Sam Holt.

This was the first good news Akira had heard since arriving, and despite his promise not to get involved, he found himself surging forward fast enough to startle the wolf.

"Your dad," Akira said, breathless. "You found him?"

On the screen, Pidge drew up short, their face carefully blank. Her face? Akira was pretty sure he'd heard the rest of the team use _she_ , and he figured they would know better than him. It was a strange adjustment to make, though, after everything else.

"Yeah," Pidge said. "He's back on Earth, getting people mobilized."

Safe. After the emotional roller-coaster of the last few hours, it was almost too much to process, and he couldn't blink fast enough to hold the tears back. "Where did you find him?"

"Why do you care?"

Akira breathed in, straining for steadiness. He swiped at his cheeks, cursing himself. He needed this--needed _something_ good to come out of this universe. If he could take information back to Matt and Pidge, even if it didn't end up going anywhere, it was hope, and they were sorely in need of that.

"Okay, so I know this is going to sound like a load of horseshit, but hear me out. I'm not from this reality."

Akira waited for the skepticism, but the looks traded over the comms, while guarded, had the distinct flavor of recognition. "You mean like Sven sort of other realities?" Lance asked.

Akira felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "Wait, you know Sven, too? What the hell is it with that universe?"

"Too?" Hunk asked, but Pidge talked right over him.

"No one say anything," she growled. "We're not letting him cold read us."

The others fell silent, shooting awkward glances all around. Keith looked over his shoulder, and it was strange to see a familiar sort of conflict play out across human features rather than Galra. "He did save my life," Keith pointed out. "Told me how to get Haggar out of Shiro's--the clone's--head."

"Yeah, and Lotor did an awful lot to help us, too. Doesn't mean he wasn't murdering Alteans on the side." Pidge shook her head, a frenetic energy coiling through her body. "And let's not forget about how Haggar played us all with Operation Kuron--the clone included. I'm  not taking any more chances until I have some solid proof that this person isn't just bullshitting us."

"That's fair," Akira said, before any of the others had a chance to voice their opinions. "You want proof that I've been to that other reality? The one with Sven and Slav and the Altean Empire."

Allura stiffened at the words, and Akira grimaced in sympathy. He couldn't imagine that was a pleasant memory for her, after all she'd faced. But Pidge seemed bolstered by the fact that Akira had volunteered the information, and they sat forward--still wary, but listening intently.

"I wasn't there long," Akira said, reaching into his belt pouch for the drive Sven had given him. "But I have the specs on the hoktril--the mind control device. I'm not sure if you ran into it while you were there."

"We did," Keith said.

Akira nodded. "Well, I promised Sven I would try to find someone who could reverse-engineer a way to free prisoners who've had it applied. You could take a look at the data, if that would put your mind at ease. There's also notes on here from another version of Pidge on the device that's got me pinballing between realities. We were hoping this jump would take me home, but I guess I don't have the coordinates quite right yet."

He held up the drive, and Pidge considered it for a long moment before nodded. "I'll take a look once we've landed."

"After we help Shiro."

Akira's heart seemed to have lodged in his throat. "I thought Coran said he was too far gone."

"The clone, yes." Keith's shoulders were rigid, and he kept his eyes forward as he spoke. "There's nothing wrong with the body, though, except that without the clone's consciousness, there's no Quintessence to keep it alive."

"So... what? You're going to charge the body up with Quintessence and hope for the best?"

Keith's breath hitched.

"Shiro himself is still alive," Allura said. "In a way. It seems the Black Lion absorbed his consciousness, preserved it. He has no body, and this body has no soul." She paused, and Akira immediately recoiled from the notion, his stomach twisting at the thought of someone taking control of his brother's body--even if that someone was Takashi himself. "There is no guarantee the body will accept Shiro's mind, but it's a chance."

"It's the only chance either of them have," Keith said. His voice was raw, and he didn't sound any more okay with this than Akira was. That was the only thing that made him hold his tongue. They'd been through enough already--Takashi and his clones. It sickened Akira to think that he was going to be used one last time.

But if the clone was anything like Takashi, he would have been the first to volunteer for this. To offer himself as a way to give the team back someone they'd lost.

It still didn't sit right with Akira, but he shut his mouth and retreated back to the corner to sit one final vigil over his brother.

-

The transfer was swift and easy. Allura drew Takashi's spirit out of the Black Lion, then knelt beside Keith and pushed Takashi's Quintessence into the dying clone body. He shot upright, then almost immediately collapsed against Keith, as weak as either of the clones Akira had held as they died.

Akira watched it all from a distance, sick to his stomach and fighting back tears, and when Takashi looked up at him without so much as a glimmer of recognition, Akira's heart broke. This was not his Takashi, however much they looked alike. Akira couldn't protect him from a universe that seemed to want to break him apart. He couldn't even offer comfort in the aftermath.

"Who are you?" Takashi asked, his voice dry and rasping.

Akira smiled, though he felt like bursting into tears. "No one important."

"Rest," Keith ordered, grabbing Takashi by the shoulder as he tried to stand. "You've been through a lot."

After only a momentary fight, Takashi relented, sagging against Keith and falling instantly into a doze. At least they still had each other. Maybe this wasn't Akira's family, and maybe he couldn't offer more than empty words, but he could at least take comfort in knowing that Keith would take care of his brother, in this or any reality.

Pidge came soon after to claim Akira's drive. She grumbled about losing the castle's resources but settled in with her laptop and the Green Lion at her back, and Akira left her to her work. He retreated to the shadow of the Red Lion, away from the prying eyes of the team, and pressed his forehead to his knees.

"This isn't your reality," he whispered to himself. "This isn't your team. You'll wake up tomorrow and this all might as well be a bad dream."

A bad dream where his brother had died not just once, but three _fucking_ times.

"Here."

Akira lifted his head and stared for a long moment at the drive in Pidge's hand.

"Sorry I couldn't be more help with the universe hopping," she said. "But my laptop can only do so much."

Akira squeezed her hand. "Don't worry about it. You've got your own team to take care of."

She grabbed his hand as he pulled back, and he stopped, watching emotions play out across her face. "I put in all the data I have on where they were keeping my dad." She smiled at his shock, then patted his hand. "Your Pidge is still looking for him, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah," Akira said. "Thanks."

She helped him up, hesitated for a moment, then flung her arms around his waist. "I hope you make it home soon, Akira. Take care of yourself."

He squeezed her back, straining to keep hold of his composure. "Yeah. You take care of--of Shiro for me. I know he has a problem with letting go."

Pidge pulled back, her brow furrowed. Maybe she realized there was more between Akira and Takashi than he was saying, but she had the grace not to say it, and for that Akira was grateful. He didn't want to go into that right now. Not with Pidge, not with Keith, and certainly not with Takashi.

He just wanted to go. To leave this reality behind. He held out his arm and the teleporter still strapped there and let Pidge input a new set of coordinates. Then, flicking a salute, he made the jump before he had time to worry about what was waiting for him on the other side.

It couldn't be any worse than this reality.


	6. Z1A2P2A5C2S2K1L2P3H3S2M5T1L1M1

Akira awoke to darkness.

 

For a moment there was a brief surge of panic, the fear that he’d somehow ended up back in that empty, lifeless void from his second jump, before his eyes adjusted and he picked out the faint glow of emergency track-lighting marking out a doorway. Not a void, then. A cargo hold. But where?

 

He pushed himself carefully to his feet, abused muscles protesting, and made his way over to the marked opening. Caution made him push the door open just slightly, scanning the dark passageway beyond, but there was no sight or sound of anyone moving. There did seem to be light at one end of the hallway, though, reassuringly Altean-blue rather than Galra-purple.

 

Heading down the corridor towards the lightsource, Akira stopped abruptly in the doorway, and probably would have laughed if he hadn’t been so drained from the previous universe. He hadn’t just landed close to the paladins this time, he’d actually landed  _ in _ one of the Lions. Blue, by the look of things. Which meant that this universe’s blue paladin--the absence of the additional chairs was enough to tell him at a glance that he wasn’t home yet--probably wasn’t far away.

 

He stepped into the cockpit, intending to hail the Castle and see about getting some help with the damned teleporter device so he could get home and hug the living hell out of his brother, but almost immediately something caught his feet and sent him stumbling to his knees with a yelp. Nerves still on hair-trigger, he whipped around to punch his attacker and found--blankets?

 

Several thin Altean emergency blankets had been layered on the floor of the cockpit into a makeshift bed. The first pricklings of unease made the hair on the back of Akira’s neck stand on end. Someone had been living in Blue’s cockpit, probably for quite a while given how rumpled and worn the blankets were. But why?

 

Sitting up on his heels, he scanned the cockpit. Almost immediately, his gaze landed a pair of paladin helmets sitting side by side at one end of the ‘bed’. One red, one blue. But they were badly scuffed and battered, like they’d been used heavily and not maintained. The unease in his gut grew.

 

“Lance?” He called, taking a gamble on the names. They’d been consistent so far, after all. “Keith?”

 

Only silence answered his shout. They weren’t here.

 

Akira frowned. Something didn’t feel right about this. The abandoned helmets, the used blankets; and there was something about the emptiness of the cockpit, like there was something missing that he couldn’t put his finger on…

 

Or maybe the horror show of the last reality had made him paranoid. There could be plenty of reasons the cockpit looked the way it did. Maybe they’d only just returned from an extended mission. Or they were stranded on a planet, and didn’t feel they needed all their gear.

 

(But then why would they need the rest of their armor and not their helmets?)

 

He disentangled himself from the blankets and got back to his feet, making his way to the pilot’s chair and dropping into it. To his surprise the main screens didn’t come up automatically like they usually did even when it wasn’t one of the Lion’s own paladins in the cockpit. Frowning, he studied the console, then carefully keyed out what he hoped was the appropriate sequence.

 

The screen flickered to life, displaying Blue’s surroundings, and Akira’s breath caught in his throat.

 

He’d seen this scene before, from a different perspective, back when the Kerberos mission first landed, before they lost contact, before the Galra stole Takashi and Matt and Sam and his brother was blamed for something that hadn’t happened. Vast, rocky icefields, stretching in all directions. The looming brown bulk of Pluto overhead, framed by the distant glow of the milky way. But those images hadn’t included the great scar torn in the landscape by a Galran tractor beam. Hadn’t included the  _ Persephone _ , waiting alone some distance away as though her crew would return at any moment.

 

“Kerberos...?”. Why the  _ hell _ was Blue sitting on  _ Kerberos? _ And where were Lance and Keith?

 

Without thinking, Akira reached for the bond. He hadn’t had many occasions to practice actively using it, but it should have at least given him him a distant awareness of Keith’s presence. Instead he found himself gasping like he’d been submerged in ice water, nerves rattling like he’d missed a step on the stairs, suddenly sickeningly aware of the total  _ emptiness _ in the back of his head where Red’s presence should have been.

 

He was in Blue. The Lions existed in this reality. So why couldn’t he feel Red? Where was Keith? Matt? Takashi? 

 

He tore free from the chair before he’d even realized it, yelling whatever names crossed his mind. He ripped through the interior of the Lion like a hurricane, searching every inch for someone, anyone who could tell him what the hell was going on. Every room, every storage space, was empty. He was utterly alone.

 

Eventually, panting and spent and bewildered, he collapsed back into the chair. “Blue,” he muttered desperately, “what the hell’s going on? Where is everyone?”

 

There was no answer. In the silence, Akira realized that he couldn’t even feel Blue watching him. This was more than the quiet of a Lion drained of power. She felt...she felt as lifeless as any of the Human-made cargo ships he had ever flown. Like she had never been alive at all.

 

“No...no, c’mon Blue. Wake up! Wake the fuck up!” He pounded the console with a fist, heart pounding in his chest. She couldn’t be dead. She was a  _ Lion! _ The sheer wrongness of the situation, one thing after another, felt like ice in his heart, panic mounting.

 

The console beeped, a window flashing open to show a person arranging themselves in front of the camera. For a moment Akira felt a flash of hope--someone was contacting the Lion!--only to have it fall out the bottom of his chest. It was just a video file. He must’ve accidentally brought it back to the main screen when he’d smacked the buttons, and hit the replay too. The tanned skin and lanky limbs couldn’t be anyone but Lance. Then Akira did a double-take and froze as Lance began to speak.

 

_ “Pilot’s log, stardate...oh who the fuck cares. It’s not like it matters anymore.” _

 

It was Lance, yes, but not the Lance he knew, or even either of the Lance’s from the last two universes. This one was several years older than his own, with a face bisected by a jagged scar running down the side of his nose, and carried an air of deep weariness that made him look even older. This Lance looked worn down, tired.  _ Defeated. _

 

_ “Caught more blips at the edge of scanner range today.” _ Lance continued, his voice low and rough. From the look of things, the cockpit lights were off around him, and he kept his voice barely above a whisper. Running dark? _ “That makes three in the last decarotation. Won’t be much longer until they find us and that’ll be that.” _ A bitter laugh.  _ “Who knows, maybe it’ll be quick. Not like there’s anyone left to bribe or blackmail with our lives.” _

 

Akira felt sick, unable to move. What did he mean, no one left? What had  _ happened _ here? 

 

On the screen, Lance shifted, tucking long legs up to his chest. The black undersuit he was wearing had the same worn look to it as the helmets Akira had found, with tears in the material in places, and where the skin of his shins showed through it looked wrong. Pale, shiny. Metallic.  _ “We’ll take as many with us as we can, but...fuck…” _ He pressed a hand to his eyes, and even in the low light Akira caught the glimmer of tears.  _ “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. What kind of piece of shit paladin can’t even protect his own team? His own family? Dammit…” _

 

Akira’s hands shook where they rested on the console. He couldn’t be hearing what he thought he was hearing. It wasn’t possible.

 

A choked sob from Lance gave way to a rustling noise in the background of the video, a muffled voice saying something too low for Akira to catch. Lance hoarsely muttered something about  _ “I’m fine, I’m fine, go back to sleep” _ before being interrupted as a second pair of arms encircled him. It took Akira a long moment to recognize the mass of dark hair as Keith--human again here, with scars gashing across his cheek, another half-hidden on his throat that was still unmistakably hand-shaped and made Akira feel sick with realization, and with the same air of exhaustion as his teammate--as the other inserted himself into the pilot’s chair beside Lance and pulled the sobbing Blue Paladin into his arms.

 

_ “Shh...it’s okay...I’ve got you…” _ Keith stroked Lance’s hair, holding him close, either unaware or uncaring of the video being recorded.  _ “Breathe, Alej.” _

 

Lance did as he was told, sucking in a wobbly breath and tucking his head under the shorter man’s chin. For a long minute the video was nothing else, just an old, tired, scarred Keith coaxing an equally battered Lance through his breakdown until his breathing settled. Akira thought distantly that he shouldn’t be seeing this. This should be a private moment. But he couldn’t bring himself to move.

 

_ “‘m sorry.” _ Lance mumbled after a while.

 

_ “Don’t be.” _ Keith’s rejoinder was gentle and firm.

 

Lance closed his eyes, letting out a slow breath.  _ “I miss them so much. I just...I couldn’t save any of them. Not Shiro, not Hunk, not Coran, not Altea or my family or the Lions...I can’t even figure out Holt’s message. I let them all down, Kuro…” _

 

There it was. The confirmation he’d feared.

 

Akira felt like he was going to vomit. The last universe had been cruel, using his brother as a punching bag again and again and again. But at the end of it all, he’d been alive, at least when Akira had left. Here, though…

 

Here it seemed Takashi and almost everyone he cared about had  _ all _ ended up dead.

 

Keith sighed and pressed a hand to the tanned cheek, kissing the messy brown hair. His own eyes sparkled, although the tears didn’t fall.  _ “You tried your best. That’s all anyone can ask _ .  _ You tried.” _ He stroked Lance’s hair a moment longer in silence.  _ “We’ll figure out what Holt meant. There’s still time. Come on. Let’s go get some sleep.” _ He reached out with his other hand to touch the console and the image went abruptly still as the video reached its end.

 

Akira was left gasping where he sat, tears burning on his cheeks. He’d seen enough. Heard enough. This universe had been crueler than he thought possible. He struggled to his feet, a wave of dizziness overtaking him as his heart pounded and his lungs burned with the desperate need to get out of here, get  _ away _ from this place of death and despair. He punched coordinates into the teleporter without looking, slammed the button with a shaking hand, and vanished in a flash of blue.


	7. Z1A2P7A1C1S3K1L2P1H1S2M13T2L5M1

Hard metal under his back.

 

Anger and despair and grief churning in his gut, pounding in his head.

 

Body shaking, eyes burning, lungs aching.

 

He couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t breathe.

 

Muffled footsteps. Shouting.

 

Black spots in his vision.

 

Hands grabbing him.

 

A sharp jerk to his helmet, twisting to the side.

 

A cold burn in his lungs.

 

Then darkness.

 

_______

 

Akira woke up in a bed.

 

Forcing bleary eyes open, he spotted the familiar walls of the Castle’s infirmary before he was forced to close them again, the bright lights feeling like an icepick to the brain. Groaning, he settled back into the blessedly cool pillow and took a deep breath, trying to will the massive headache away. As his muddled thoughts started to clear, he started taking stock of the situation.

 

He was on the Castleship. Again. So, a relatively safe environment, probably. And the local paladins were...surprisingly blasé about people popping out of nowhere, because the brief look hadn’t produced any indication of someone guarding him inside the room. Or they just didn’t consider him a threat. Whatever. He’d take it as encouraging, and accept the peace and quiet for as long as it lasted.

 

On the other hand, being alone meant he  _ probably _ wasn’t home, because after disappearing for so long (how long had it been, anyway? A few days at the very least.) the others would have been hovering. They had to be worried sick.

 

He swallowed around the lump in his throat. Was he ever going to make it home? Or would he be stuck hopping from god-awful universe to god-awful universe forever? 

 

Maybe he’d eventually have to just pick a less-terrible one and settle down, if the locals would have him. The one with Rose had been nice, maybe they would let him stay. Even though he’d broken his promise to her to not hurt anymore. The multiverse had made that impossible, showing him his brother dying over and over, and then that other universe with the video...

 

A knock at the infirmary door distracted him from painful memories and Akira’d never been so grateful to have his train of thought interrupted. “Come in…?” He called, caught off guard by the unexpected courtesy.

 

He heard the door slide open. “The monitor said you’d woken up.” Came a cheerful, wonderfully familiar voice. “How are you feeling?”

 

It took Akira a moment to find the words, relief surging through him.  _ Matt _ . He’d expected Coran, if anyone, but Matt’s presence was a welcome feeling of normality, at least for the moment. “Uh...head hurts. A lot.” He managed after a minute.

 

Matt chuckled, and Akira heard him rustling around on the far side of the room. “That’s not surprising. You were having a panic attack in a suit with a damaged oxygen recycler. Lucky Lance managed to get your helmet off before you suffocated yourself.” Then uneven footsteps crossing the room before something was pressed into his palm. “Here. That should help. There’s water here if you need it.”

 

Akira downed the medicine without protest, chasing it with the water pack Matt pressed into his hand. “My oxygen recycler was damaged?” He asked as he waited for the fast-acting Altean painkiller to kick in.

 

“Yeah, it looks like it got hit with something. Hunk and Coran are taking a look at it now.”

 

Huh. Probably in the Galra lab. Once aboard the Black Lion, he hadn’t resealed his helmet until he’d made the jump to the next universe.

 

Thinking about that terrifyingly empty place, Akira was suddenly desperate for the sight of a familiar face. He forced his eyes open despite the fact that the headache hadn’t fully subsided, and willed them to focus on Matt.

 

As he’d suspected, not his Matt. No crystals marred his face. But this time there was something else in their place, a set of four scars like claw marks gashing across the left side of his face from hairline to chin, and the eye on that side was clouded white rather than electric blue, leaving a sick feeling twisting in Akira’s gut, dismay at the thought of Matt, any Matt, being hurt like that and rage at whoever had done it. Impulse took over and he yanked Matt into a hug.

 

Matt yelped in surprise at the unexpected grab, but didn’t struggle. “I guess that answers one question.” He muttered. “You do know who I am.”

 

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.” Akira quickly released him as he realized what he was doing, feeling his cheeks burning. Way to make an introduction, a total stranger forcibly hugging people just after waking up. “It’s been a rough few days.” And god, if that wasn’t the understatement of the century.

 

Unexpectedly, Matt just offered him a sympathetic smile and patted his shoulder as he straightened back up. “Don’t worry about it. We figured something like this might happen, although I’ll admit I didn’t expect to be the one you grabbed.”

 

“Why? Who did you think I would grab?” Akira raised an eyebrow as he tried, again, to understand how Matt was so relaxed about this.

 

“Most of us were betting on Takashi or Ryou.” Matt grinned. “You look a lot like them, figured you might be a relative. Which reminds me-do you have a name you want us to call you by?”

 

“Uh, Akira Shirogane…” Akira fumbled, simultaneously relieved by the knowledge that his brother was here, safe, and trying to figure out who the hell Ryou might be. A brother, like Sven’s? “Do you...do you guys get a lot of people just popping out of literally nowhere or something? Usually there’s a lot more paranoia.” He couldn’t help thinking of Shiro and Coran standing guard over him, or the tension that had surrounded him in the universe with the lab, and contrasting it with Matt’s relaxed, open posture where he sat on the edge of the bed.

 

“Well, considering you’re our third time-traveller…yes.” Matt leaned back on his hands and regarded Akira seriously. “So if your headache’s gone and you’re feeling up to it, the others would like to talk to you. The sooner you tell us why you’re here, the sooner we can act on it, and hopefully avoid it.”

 

Akira gaped like a fish. Of all the possible answers he had been expecting,  _ that _ was not one of them.  _ Time travel?! _

 

“I’m, uh...I’m not a time traveller.” He said belatedly when he realized that Matt was still looking at him waiting for a response. “Or at least, I don’t think I am.” Although the paladins in Rose’s universe had definitely been older than his own or the ones in the lab universe, and Lance in the video had looked older too. “Pidge--my version of Pidge--was trying to build a teleporter and I offered to test it, only it tossed me into another universe and I’ve been jumping around trying to get home.” He looked around for the device, suddenly realizing it must have been taken off when they stripped off his damaged suit--it was honestly kind of depressing that he was getting used to having his clothes changed while he was unconscious by total strangers--and relaxed when he spotted it on the table by the bed.

 

It was Matt’s turn to blink in stunned surprise as he processed that. Then his shoulders slumped in a sudden release of tension that startled Akira, and he ran a hand through his hair with a tired laugh. “Oh man, really? That’s...honestly a bit of a relief, I’ll admit. Kurogane and Alejandro have been worried sick they somehow made things worse instead of better. Come on.” He pushed himself to his feet and offered a hand to Akira. “I’ll introduce you to the others, and we’ll see if we can’t figure out a way to help get you home, then.”

 

His confidence bolstered Akira’s, and he accepted the offered hand up from the bed, grabbing the teleporter before following Matt out of the room. The hallways looked the same as the Castle he knew, and with Matt limping ahead of him (was it just him or was this Matt’s limp worse than his own’s?) he could almost pretend he was home. Almost.

 

Matt led him not to the bridge, but to one of the lounges off an outer corridor. He could hear muffled voices as they approached that fell abruptly silent as Matt palmed the door open and stepped inside. “Everything’s okay, guys. He’s not a time traveller. Just a lost universe hopper. Guys, this is Akira Shirogane.” He waved a hand as Akira cautiously stepped up beside him and scanned the occupants of the room, wanting to reassure himself that in  _ this _ universe, at least, they were all alive and safe.

 

He listened with half an ear as Matt pointed out each person for him. Hunk and Coran were nowhere to be seen, probably off somewhere trying to fix Akira’s suit, but Pidge, Lance, Allura, and Takashi (and he couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief at the sight of his brother, calm and relaxed and  _ alive _ ) were easily recognizable. Keith he spotted after a moment--Human again, was his the only universe where Keith actually looked Galra? More unexpected was Karen Holt sitting easily beside Pidge, even more so when Matt called her Colleen. A Galran woman was identified as Kovirak--Keith’s  _ mother _ , apparently, and he got the distinct impression that she was nothing at all like Keena--and a man with a definite familial resemblance to Takashi turned out to be the previously-mentioned Ryou. Reaching the end of that list, Matt paused and frowned. “Where’s Alejandro and Kurogane?”

 

“Probably in their room. They were getting pretty stressed.” Lance grimaced.

 

Sighing, Matt nodded in understanding. “Makes sense. I’d better go update them.” He turned to leave again.

 

Colleen snapped her book closed and got to her feet. “No, I’ll do that, and check in with Hunk and Coran.  _ You _ will rest your leg after that sprint earlier.” She shot her son a disapproving look.

 

Matt flushed but nodded, limping obediently across the room to sprawl across Takashi’s lap in a way that laid one of Akira’s silent questions to rest immediately. Akira followed, suppressing a laugh. Apparently the Mama Holts of the multiverse just didn’t change no matter where you went. 

 

The moment he sat down, he suddenly found himself surrounded by Lance on one side and Pidge on the other, regarding him intently. “...what--”

 

“So, multiverse teleportation? How did you manage to develop that, it could be really useful?”

 

“What’s your home universe like? Is it really different from here?”

 

“Are you a paladin?”

 

“Matt said you were lost, how many different universes have you seen?”   
  
“Do you know what--”

 

“Guys!” Takashi’s exasperated voice cracked across whatever Pidge’s next question was. “He can’t answer you if you don’t give him a chance.”

 

Akira shot his brother a fervently grateful look as the other two mumbled bashful apologies and received an amused eyeroll in return. Turning back to Pidge and Lance, he cleared his throat. “Okay. My name is Akira Shirogane, like Matt said. In my home universe, I’m Takashi’s twin brother. I dunno if he has one of those in this timeline or not.”

 

“No, just an obnoxious older-cousin-slash-adopted-brother.” Takashi shot a mock-annoyed look at Ryou, who just laughed and fluttered his eyelashes playfully. 

 

“You know you love me.” 

 

Akira chuckled, but his heart twisted a bit. The way they interacted, they might as well have been brothers, and it made him miss his own version of Takashi even more fiercely. He hastily looked away, focusing on the two younger paladins. “Anyway. I’m not a paladin, but I am the red adjunct. It’s...basically a support role bond with the Red Lion and her paladins. But I’m guessing you don’t have adjunct bonds here, either.” He added, seeing the puzzled looks on their faces.

 

“Definitely not.” Pidge said firmly, pushing their glasses up on the bridge of their nose. “The Lion bonds are really restrictive, at least in this universe. They’ll only accept paladins whose quintessence is entirely the matching colour, and is also linked to four other people whose quintessence matches the other lions. There’s only the paladin bond, at least as far as we know.” The disgusted look on her face suggested there was a story behind that phrase.

 

Akira nodded and closed his eyes for a moment. That explained a lot. He could feel Red, distantly, but the bond was oddly muffled and he couldn’t tell who her paladins were or how many, only a faint echo that told him there was at least one. It was uncomfortable, but still better than the cold emptiness from before. “Alright, then I guess you don’t have dual paladins then, either?” 

 

The exchange of questions went back and forth for a while, each side learning more about the other’s universe. The local team was fascinated by the concept of dual-piloting, and in turn he learned their piloting arrangement--Lance in Blue, Pidge in Green, Keith in Red, Hunk in Yellow, and Shiro in Black, with Allura training to use her quintessence manipulation skills for combat while the others tried to unlock quintessence-based abilities and Lion upgrades called ‘aspects’. They had apparently managed to incapacitate Zarkon, but not kill him, and had just recently managed to stop an attack on their own Earth by a massive weapon apparently capable of destroying entire planets, the sheer thought of which sent a shudder of horror down Akira’s spine, orchestrated by Haggar. 

 

The conversation seemed to skirt around some subjects, both on Akira’s side when it came to the other universes he’d visited--these kids had enough to deal with without second-hand horrors--and on the part of the others when it came to some of the details of their fights like how exactly Haggar had been involved in the attack on Earth. Something had definitely happened, but the subject was clearly uncomfortable and he didn’t push. Despite that, the conversation was oddly soothing, grounding after everything he’d been through, as it wandered from topic to topic.

 

Or at least, it was until Pidge started going through his flash drive to review the notes their--no, her, Akira reminded himself, having being corrected once earlier--alternates had made on the the teleporter.

 

“What’s this folder? Coordinates? Base specs?” They asked with a frown. “For what?”

 

Akira looked up from where he was explaining the exploits of Mama Holt’s Army to a highly amused Matt. “Oh, uh, the Pidge in one of the other universes put that on there for me. It’s where she found her Dad. Maybe it’ll help our Pidge find theirs. Or you find yours, if you want to make a copy of it.” He added.

 

It was the wrong thing to say. Everyone in the room stiffened, and Pidge’s expression instantly became closed off, while Matt’s became distinctly pained, shadows darkening the bright amber of his remaining eye. In that moment Akira knew without anyone having to tell him that they already knew the fate of the Sam of this universe and it wasn’t good. “Shit...I’m sorry. I...fuck.” Guilt settled heavy into his chest.

 

“Not your fault.” Matt’s voice was clipped as he pushed himself abruptly to his feet, wincing as his left leg took his weight, and that only made Akira feel a thousand times worse. “I’m going to go see what’s keeping Mom.”

 

“I’ll go with you.” Takashi was right behind him as he slipped out of the room, not even glancing back at Akira.

 

Akira grimaced and covered his face in the resounding silence that was left in the wake of their departure. Well done, Akira. Part of him desperately want to know what had happened to Sam that had hurt them so badly--if the worst happened, he wanted to be prepared to comfort his own family--but he forcibly reined in his mouth before he could make things worse.

 

“Your...your universe is different than ours, right?” Pidge’s soft voice broke into his mental self-castigation. “Things happened differently?”

 

“...Yeah.” A lot differently, from the sound of it.Everything was different here, aside from the faces he knew.

 

There was a pause, another silence filled only with the clatter of Pidge’s fingers dancing over the keyboard. “...I’ve added the coordinates for...for where…” she faltered, swallowed, then skipped the rest of the sentence. “It’s probably not going to be any use...too different, but...maybe it’ll do some good.”

 

Akira’s heart swelled with pride and gratitude for the sheer strength in the tiny little paladin. Maybe that was universal too. “Thank you, Pidge. I hope so too.”

 

_____ 

 

Colleen returned a while after that to inform them that dinner was nearly ready if they wanted to head for the dining room, and that Akira’s suit wouldn’t be fixed before tomorrow at the earliest--apparently the design was subtly different to anything currently on the Castleship, so Coran was having to use the ship’s facilities to custom make the replacement parts. So he was going to be stuck here for at least one night, and Pidge took the opportunity to dive into the coding for the teleporter and her alternate’s notes in the hopes of finding some more reliable way of guiding him home than just trying random combinations of numbers. As they made their way through the ship she was already hard at work, and only occasional intervention by Lance kept her from smacking into walls with her laptop.

 

“Is your Pidge like this too?” Was Keith’s quiet question as he fell in beside him.

 

“Always.” Akira laughed quietly. “Most of you aren’t too different from the versions that I know, as far as I can see. Just little things, like Pidge’s pronouns and you not being full Galra.”

 

Keith frowned slightly at that, his gaze darting to Lance as the lanky teen deftly steered Pidge around another corner. “Even--oof!”

 

Whatever he was saying was cut off as he collided with Akira in the doorway of the dining room. Akira steadied him automatically, but all his attention was on two of the people already sitting at the table. One looked like Lance, but several years older and a whole lot wearier, with a scar running down his nose before veering across his cheek. And the other looked like Keith, again, older, with claw marks ripped across his cheek and a scar like a handprint burned into his throat.

 

The Lance and Keith from the video. From an entirely different  _ universe _ . 

 

“Akira? You alright, buddy?” A hand waving in front of his face startled him and he jerked back slight. “Whoah, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. You just kinda...spaced on us there.” Lance was looking at him in concern. Most of the room was, for that matter.

 

“I…” Whatever was going on, the dinner table was probably not the place to bring it up. “...No, I’m fine. Sorry.”

 

Lance looked like he didn’t believe him one bit, but nodded and turned away to the table. Akira ended up taking the last spot between him and Keith as Hunk started serving out plates of some space-made variation on lasagna.

 

During dinner, he kept his mouth shut and listened to the conversations around him, most of it idle chatter or Lance relating the things he’d learned from Akira. But his gaze kept drifting back to the pair on the other side of the table. Matt had mentioned something about time travel back in the infirmary, hadn’t he? Did that have something to do with these two being here?

 

(And if it did...was the dead Lion on an icy moon the past, or was it the future?)

 

As the dishes were cleared away, the older Lance--Alejandro, Akira had heard him called a few times, meaning the older Keith was probably Kurogane--looked at him. “So, you’re Akira, right?” He pushed himself to his feet. “Walk with me, would you?”

 

Akira could only nod and follow. Maybe now he could get some answers.

 

Alejandro led him out into the hallway, setting off through the Castle. The two of them walked in silence, and after a while Akira recognized the path to the Blue Lion’s hangar. Only once they were inside the vast chamber did Alejandro turn and face him. “Forgive me for being blunt, but is there a reason you were staring at us all through dinner?” He asked, folding his arms and quirking an eyebrow.

 

Akira opened his mouth, then shut it again. How to explain? “I’ve seen you before.” He said finally. “In a video.”

 

Alejandro’s frown deepened, but he gestured for Akira to continue.

 

“In the last universe I was in, I ended up in the Blue Lion. She was sitting on Kerberos, alone. And it was...it felt...like she wasn’t really there. Her body was, but she was gone.” The memory of the chilling emptiness of that place made him shiver. Across from him, Alejandro stiffened.

 

“There was a video recording on the main screen. You, or someone who looks just like you, was recording a log. You mentioned picking up Galra signatures at the edge of the sensor range, that it wasn’t going to be long until they found you.” The details spilled out of him in a rush as he tried to offer whatever proof he could of his passage through that place. He needed answers. Needed closure on that awful world. “And then you started apologizing for not being able to save your team. Kurogane--or someone like him--woke up and--”

 

“ _ Enough. _ ” Alejandro cut him off sharply, startling Akira with the force of his outburst. He looked badly shaken, and ran a hand through his hair as he started pacing back and forth. “I... _ fuck _ ...that’s not...it shouldn’t still  _ be _ there! We left!” With a visible effort of will, he stopped, taking a deep breath before turning to face Akira again. “Did any of the others tell you who we are? What we did and why?”

 

“No.” They’d been mentioned a few times. The idea of ‘fixing’ or ‘changing’ things had been mentioned. But Akira hadn’t pried. As much as the others had obviously avoided the more painful subjects, Akira had avoided them too. He hadn’t wanted to know what was wrong under the surface. Hadn’t wanted to know all the ways this version of his family had been hurt.

 

His heart was already in shreds. If he didn’t get home soon...he wasn’t sure how much more he’d be able to take.

 

Another slow, heavy inhalation. “Right. Okay. Short version, Kurogane and I are time travellers. We came back using a powerful ability of the Blue Lion, one which knew would drain all her quintessence and kill her, because in our universe there was no hope left. All the other paladins were dead. The rebellions had been totally stamped out. And with the exception of Blue, all the Lions had been destroyed.”

 

Akira reeled.

 

The shadows in the eyes in the video, that still lingered in Alejandro’s eyes even now. The raw grief in his voice. No wonder he’d given up hope. There hadn’t been any reason not to. Even their option of last resort...he tried to imagine Lance so desperate that he would do something like that to Blue, and his mind balked. The level of despair it would have required was simply beyond his ability to comprehend.

 

“When you showed up in Blue, we assumed you were like us. A blue paladin come back to alter the course of the future because something had gone wrong. We thought we’d screwed up somehow. Hearing that wasn’t the case...you have no idea what a relief that was.”

 

After everything they’d lost, of course they’d want to avoid a repeat. Of course that was their first fear.

 

Alejandro exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. “But I thought when we came back that the old timeline...vanished. Replaced by a new future, where we hoped to make things better. But you’re telling me that’s not the case. That we abandoned the people of our home timeline to unchallenged Galra rule.” His eyes shone as he looked at Akira, silently begging him to tell him otherwise.

 

_ Oh. _ Now Akira understood the reasoning behind the outburst. After all the chaos of the last several days,  _ this _ was a situation he knew how to handle.

 

“It’s not like you had a choice.” He said quietly, stepping forward and slowly putting an arm around Alejandro. When the other man made no move to resist, he pulled him fully into a hug. “From the sounds of it, there was nothing you could have done. Not alone like that. At least by coming back in time, you created a divergent timeline where those people  _ will _ survive, where they  _ will _ be free one day.” Where everyone he cared about might make it through this war.

 

Alejandro leaned into him, biting his lip, but gave a small nod as he took in Akira’s words. “I guess…” He huffed out a watery laugh. “Is this whole comforting thing just a Shirogane genetic trait? You all do it. Shiro, Ryou, and now you.”

 

Akira barked out a laugh. “I’m adjunct to  _ Matt _ and  _ Keith _ . It’s a skill I had to get good at fast.”

 

Alejandro snorted, but Akira was pleased to see him crack a genuine grin, his misery at least somewhat lessened by the reassurance. “Matt’s pretty collected here, but Keith? Yeah, I can see that. It took Kurogane and I ages to work our shit out, and Keith and Lance are just a mess. I can’t believe we were ever like that.”

 

“Can’t be any worse than mine were, to hear Takashi tell it.”

 

“Oh, you would be  _ amazed. _ Do you know what those two lovestruck idiots did? Confessed independently, and they each  _ rejected _ each other.”

 

“Oh my god, you’re kidding.”

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

_______

 

“Systems check?”

 

“Testing now.” Akira sealed his helmet and brought up the diagnostic screen on his suit, putting it through a full check. The last thing he needed was to discover that something else was faulty while out in the middle of an airless void.

 

Lights flashed across his screen, followed by a series of readouts. Coran looked over them, and gave Akira a beaming smile. “Good to go! Your suit is back in perfect working order!”

 

“Thanks, Coran.” Akira grinned back in relief. “Sorry you had to go to so much trouble with it.”

 

Coran dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. “Not at all. It’s quite fascinating to get a glimpse into other ways in which Altean society might have developed, or ways in which our own might have grown if given more time. And I kept the schematics, since they may be useful at some point.”

 

“Right.” Akira nodded in agreement as he unsealed his helmet again. “It’s funny, you wouldn’t think the history of the Lions and the Castle would be so different from universe to universe, but it is. In mine, they’re ancient, and there’s a long line of paladins, and the Voltron Guard. In another universe I visited, they were built by Alfor himself, and the current team is only the second generation of paladins.”

 

“They’re the third, here, after the first paladins and their apprentices.” Coran chuckled, eyes sparkling as he put away the last of the repair tools from working on the suit. “And they were built by Alfor, Linnata, and myself, although I would not be surprised to find the circumstances were different.”

 

“Me either.” Akira sighed, pulling off his gloves and sticking them in his pocket. No point stripping off the suit when he’d probably be leaving soon. Next stop was Pidge’s workstation, no doubt down in the Green Lion’s hangar. “Some things are so different, and yet others always seem to be the same.”

 

“Like Altea?” Coran asked, falling in beside him as they left the room and picking up on the thought Akira hadn’t wanted to voice. That was another constant, the way the Corans of the multiverse were so incredibly perceptive.

 

“...Yeah.”

 

It was Coran’s turn to sigh, turning his gaze to the walls as they passed. “I could not begin to guess why. Multiverse theory was still a niche, entirely theoretical science back then, and not my area of expertise. The only opinion I can give you on the matter is relief that as constant as the destruction of Altea appears to be, so too does my presence at Allura’s side when she is cast into the future. I would hate to think of my daughter being forced to face this war alone.”

 

Akira stumbled, even though the floor was perfectly smooth. “I’m sorry, did you say your daughter?” He asked once he’d regained his balance.

 

“Yes. Alfor, Linnata, and I were wedded, and Allura is our daughter. I believe you humans call it a poly relationship? Was that not the case in your own universe?” 

 

“Uh...yeah. Yeah we do. And no, it was just Alfor and Lealle.” Allura and Coran, father and daughter in this universe. That was a new one on him. Thinking about it, he couldn’t help but be happy for them. They hadn’t left their entire families behind here, although his heart ached for Coran’s loss of his husband and wife. 

 

Pidge waved them over as soon as he set foot in the Green Lion’s hangar. Everyone else was already there, and the tiny Green Paladin looked thoroughly pleased with herself. Seeing the smug grin on her face, Akira felt a sudden surge of hope.

 

“Ready to go home?” She asked cheekily.

 

“You figured it out?” He asked, suddenly breathless. Was he finally going to be able to get home? To his brother, to his team, to the universe he knew?

 

“Not how to read the coordinates, no. But!” She held up a finger before his heart could fall too far. “I figured out how to access the stored data from previous jumps in stack memory, rather than the regular RAM. I should be able to send you back to any universe you’ve already visited. Including the one you started from.”

 

“...Can I hug you?  _ Please? _ ” His arms were itching from the restraint necessary to not just scoop her up without permission. When she laughed and held up her arms in invitation, he lunged forward and spun her around. “Thank you, Pidge!”

 

“Hey, I’m just glad I could help!” She grinned up at him when he finally set her down, straightening her glasses. “I’ve made myself a copy of all the code and data and scanned the schematics, so don’t be surprised if we pop in to visit at some point. I also copied over the data on the hoktril, so we’ll hopefully have something for you on that when we come.”

 

“You’re incredible, Pidge.” He beamed at her, then smiled warmly around at the others. “Thank you for all your help.”

 

As he strapped on the teleporter, he paused and looked back over at Matt, leaning against Takashi’s side. They hadn’t spoken to each other since the incident in the lounge, and even though this wasn’t his Matt, it hurt. “Listen...I’m sorry.” He faltered, not even quite sure what he was apologizing for. Matt’s loss? Bringing up painful memories?

 

“Don’t be.” Matt said firmly, and stepped forward to clasp his hand. Muffled bond or no muffled bond, Akira still felt an echo of reassurance and forgiveness that put him a little more at ease. “Just promise me you’ll find yours.” He paused, then lowered his voice for Akira’s ears only. “Promise me your Matt won’t have to watch him die.”

 

“If it’s the last thing I do.” Akira nodded grimly, even as his gut twisted sickeningly at that admission. He owed it to them, not just to his own Matt and Pidge and Takashi, but to the ones here, and across the multiverse, to make sure at least one Holt family didn’t get left in tatters. He released Matt’s hand and stepped back, punching in the string of coordinates Pidge read off for him. “Goodbye and good luck, all of you.”

 

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he hit the button and vanished in a flash of blue.


	8. Z1A3P12A3C1S3K3L2P2H1S3M13T2L5M1

Akira was home.

He knew it before he opened his eyes, before he even regained his bearings after the chaotic tumble between realities. His feet hit ground, he pitched forward, and then as he dropped to hands and knees something clicked back into place inside his chest.

The tears were instantaneous, but so were the doubts. After so many jumps, so many warped reflections of his home and his family, he didn't trust anything. Just because the other Pidge had found the stored coordinates? Akira would never presume to know better than Pidge, but none of them were experts in interdimensional travel. What if something had gone wrong? He didn't think he'd be able to take the disappointment.

But it was far too late by now to stop himself from hoping.

Akira opened his eyes and picked himself up off the floor before crossing his arms against the inevitable disappointment. He was in the Green Lion's hangar, which was dark and quiet, almost eerily so. Even Green herself was powered down, though Akira knew at once that this wasn't one of those universes where the lions were dead. Thank fuck.

The only light in the room came from Pidge's laptop, which sat open on the desk, painting stark shadows across the workstation. Pidge themself sat slumped in the chair before it, their glasses askew and their cheek smushed against the keyboard. A solid wall of 0’s filled the document open on the screen, growing ever longer.

A smile tugged at Akira's lips, and he crossed to the desk in three strides, laying a hand on Pidge's shoulder to rouse them. They jumped, nearly falling out of their chair, and Akira snatched his hand back as they stared at him blankly, the computer's glow giving them a washed out, not-quite-real look.

"Sorry," Akira whispered, his heart falling. He knew it. He knew he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up. "You didn't look too comfortable sleeping like that. Didn't want you to get a crick in your neck."

Pidge blinked, their eyes still hazy. Then all at once they stiffened, sucking in an audible gasp.

"Akira?"

Hearing his name, unprompted, hit Akira harder than he would have expected, and he barely managed to croak out a, "Hey," before his throat closed with an onslaught of tears.

Thankfully, Pidge didn't need him to say anything more. Their face scrunched up, and they flung themself at him. Their feet tangled in the rollers of their chair, so the collision was considerably less than graceful, but they didn't seem to care. They fell against him, knocking him to the floor, and locked their arms around his waist.

"We didn't know what happened to you," they said, their voice thick with tears. Their arms squeezed him tighter. "You disappeared, and Red couldn't even sense you anymore, and I--I thought you were dead. I thought I killed you."

Akira's heart clenched, and he pulled Pidge closer--not easy when they were sprawled across him and his legs were bent awkwardly around them both. "Hey," he said. "Hey, no. It wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was." With their face pressed against his chest, their voice came out muffled. "Hunk and Matt wanted to do more tests, but I didn't listen, because I'm an idiot."

The rant didn't end there, but it dissolved into muffled sobs after that, and Akira could only pick out one word in three. The questions were piling up now--how long had he been gone, and how was everyone else doing? Had there been any battles? Had anyone gotten hurt?

But his curiosity could wait. Pidge had obviously taken this hard, and, okay, in hindsight they probably should have listened to Hunk's warnings, but Akira had volunteered for this. He wasn't about to let Pidge take all the blame.

They weren't listening to reason right now, though. They probably weren't listening to much of anything over the torrent of guilt and relief pouring out of them. At least half of what was coming out now, between the hiccuping breaths and ragged sobs, was apologies. Akira sat back and listened, rubbing Pidge's back and giving them a reassuring squeeze when the words finally ran dry.

They pulled back, sniffling. "And now I'm making this all about me when you're the one who's been stuck with a badly-programmed trans-reality teleporter."

Akira arched an eyebrow. "You know about that?"

"I went back through the code to see what went wrong," Pidge said with a shrug. "I didn't  _ know _ . I couldn't be sure you hadn't died. But I had to know what happened. It… I think it was drawing on your Quintessence, and that gave it a major power boost. The watermelons didn't have that, so they couldn't surmount the barriers around reality. They tried to open a tunnel to another universe, but got booted back to this one, so it just looked like regular teleportation."

They looked up at him, then quickly glanced away. Akira followed their gaze to their desk, where a suspiciously familiar device sat, plugged into the computer. Akira hadn't noticed it in his haste to wake up Pidge, but it made his heart sink.

"You made another one."

Pidge shrank down, pulling their knees to their chest and wrapping their arms around them. "I didn't know how to bring you back. I didn't build that thing with a wireless connection that would work across universes. So... I figured I'd just have to go and find you myself." They hunched their shoulders, but Akira pulled them into another hug, his heart hammering. It hurt to think of Pidge falling into one of the empty universes. Or worse, falling into one of the many universes where Sam Holt died--falling into a whole series of them and having to watch their father die like Akira had watched Takashi and his clones die. Pidge wrapped a hand around his arm and went on in a small voice. "I was just running a few last minute tests, and then I was going to go before the others woke up."

"You  _ what? _ "

Keith's eyes flashed an eerie yellow-green in the light of the computer screen, and Pidge let out a startled yelp. Somewhere in the darkness, someone breathed in sharply, and someone else--Lance, maybe--called Pidge's name.

"They're fine," Keith said. He paused, eyes flashing again as he looked up. "Also, Akira's back."

What followed was pure chaos, but a very welcome sort of chaos after the last few days. (Five days, he soon learned, which sounded simultaneously much too short and much too long for what Akira had experienced.) Someone turned on the overhead lights, which prompted several muttered curses and several more screeches of protest, but at least gave Akira a semi-plausible excuse for the tears in his eyes as half the team swarmed him.

Hunk was the first to reach him, unseating Pidge when he hauled Akira to his feet and crushed him in a hug, but Val wasn't far behind, smacking Akira with a pillow four times before shoving it at Lance and flinging her arms around Akira's neck.

"I'm so pissed at you, Shirogane," she grumbled. "You owe me twenty pounds of chocolate, at  _ least _ ."

Akira chuckled, prying one arm loose from Hunk's hold to reach around Val and pat her back. "How about a ten-pound bag of gummy bears that we split while bingeing old episodes of Queer Eye?"

She snorted. "Fine. But I get to pick the episodes."

When Val and Hunk finally let go of Akira, they were replaced by a whole procession of others: Lance and Shay and Allura, and then Karen, who broke away from alternately lecturing Pidge and coddling them. Keith, apparently, had spilled the beans about Pidge's second teleporter prototype, and Karen wanted it known just how much she disapproved of that plan.

Akira was firmly in Mama Holt's camp on this one, but he had to sympathize with Pidge when Karen grabbed his face to hold it still while she looked him over for any signs of injuries.

Keith waited for everyone else to get their reunions in while he lingered a few feet off, hugging himself like he was afraid he was going to be sick. Akira finally had to march over to him and coax him into a hug, at which point Keith caved in an instant, hooking his fingers in Akira's flight suit to keep him from going anywhere. His ears folded back against his head as he sagged. He was shaking.

"Keith?" Akira asked, a fire stoking in his chest. He must have been through too many alternate universes lately, because he was ready to go kicking down doors looking for whoever had hurt Keith... only to remember that it was probably Akira's own disappearance that was to blame. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Keith said, his voice a little rough but sharp enough to warn off any excessive fussing. "Just glad to have you back. Matt's been worried."

Oh,  _ Matt  _ had been worried. Sure. Akira's smile faded, however, when he realized Matt wasn't in the room. Neither was Takashi, for that matter. "Where is Matt?"

Keith flinched at the question, and Pidge avoided Akira's gaze altogether. "He had a panic attack," they said. "He's had a couple since you disappeared, but this one was bad. I think he's been trying to downplay it so I don't feel bad, which is  _ stupid _ . He  _ should  _ be mad at me."

Karen gave them a squeeze as Akira's heart sank, and he turned to Lance for the rest of the explanation.

"Shiro took him somewhere to help him calm down," Lance said. "That was, I don't know, four or five hours ago? It was already pretty late, so I figured they probably just went to bed at some point."

Akira nodded, glancing down at Keith. He still seemed pretty rattled, and Akira was loathe to pull away, but he also couldn't ignore the itch beneath his skin pulling him toward Matt. (Not to mention the ache in his throat at the thought of finding his brother-- _ his  _ brother, who knew who he was and wouldn't be weirded out by Akira latching onto him for a good few hours just to prove his was alive.)

"Hey," Akira said, rubbing Keith's arm. "Want to help me find Matt and Takashi?" Keith drew in a shaky breath and nodded, and Akira flashed the others a smile. "Thanks for the welcome wagon, really. I don't know about you guys, but I'm dead tired. Is it cool if I put off the storytelling til tomorrow?"

No one argued, for which Akira was grateful. He hadn't slept especially well the last two nights, despite being in safe, generally welcoming environments. Something about the way everything felt just a little bit off, and the constant worry for his team back home had worn at him. And then there was the fact that he'd only slept twice (and passed out twice, but he wasn't counting that) despite being gone for five days. Maybe time ran different in the multiverse, but Akira was pretty sure he'd still missed out on a hell of a lot of sleep.

Well, fuck that, and fuck the entire multiverse, honestly. Akira was home, and Keith was slowly unwinding as Akira threw an arm around his shoulder and walked with him down the hallway toward the elevator. They didn't talk; Keith didn't often instigate conversation, and Akira was perfectly happy to let the silence stretch for now. He had too many other realities swirling around in his head, most of them unpleasant, and the last thing he wanted to talk about right now was how awful the last five days had been.

They were almost to the elevator when the door slid open and a breathless Matt stumbled out. He stopped, staring at Keith and Akira, and Keith's ears finally picked themselves up as Matt breathed out something that sounded like a curse but felt closer to a sob.

"Akira!"

Keith tried to dance away from Matt's embrace, but he wasn't quite fast enough and ended up in something of a choke hold as Matt breathed out a long breath, his forehead coming to rest against Akira's shoulder.

"You're okay," he said. "I can't believe you're okay."

Okay? Well, that was debatable, but Akira didn't argue the assessment. He'd made it home, in one piece, and it had been something like twenty-four hours since his last panic attack. That was an important milestone.

Matt's next breath wobbled, but he pulled back, offering a teary smile as he reached up to muss Akira's hair. "Good to have you back, man. Maybe you can convince Pidge this isn’t their fault."

Akira laughed, the sound a little more watery than it would have been without the roller coaster of emotions his return had brought on. He was still dry-eyed, by some miracle, and he started in on a joke about the round robin of fretting going on in the castle.

Then he caught sight of Takashi over Matt's shoulder, and all thoughts of putting on a brave face flew out the window.

Akira silently disentangled himself from Keith and Matt, his eyes locked on Takashi's face. Drinking him in. Reveling in the fact that he was here,  _ alive _ , and that Akira wasn't a stranger to him. Vision blurring, Akira closed the distance between them in a few faltering steps.

Takashi breathed out a wordless syllable that hovered on the edge of a curse. "Akira--"

Akira didn't hug Takashi so much as tackle him, and the breath left Takashi in a wheeze as Akira latched on. He was shaking, he knew he was, but he didn't care. He didn't-- _ fuck _ . He was home. That fact kept hitting him anew, but this time he thought it might actually break him. He was here, clinging to Takashi's pajama shirt like they were kids again and Takashi's bed was the only place Akira could go to cry when nightmares, school, or ignorant assholes finally got the better of him. Takashi's heart thudded against his chest, more frantic than Akira's own pulse, and his hands clung to Akira with equal desperation.

"What?" Takashi whispered. "What's wrong?"

Akira laughed, weak and a little hysterical, and shook his head. Doing so only made him realize he'd already soaked Takashi's shirt with tears, so maybe it wasn't such a surprise that his brother realized something had happened.

That didn't mean Akira was ready to talk about it.

"You're here," he said instead, then realized how that must sound and cringed. "Just... give me a second."

Takashi made a low, wounded noise, adjusting his embrace to something more protective, and Akira's eyes burned all over again. He listened for each heartbeat, each inhale--counted them, just to reassure himself that this was real. That Takashi wasn't dead in this reality, and wasn't going to become so for a very long time.

Footsteps indicated that Keith and Matt had come up behind Akira, their silence somehow self-conscious, like they weren't sure their presence was welcome, and Akira's face burned. If he'd wanted to keep the team from worrying about him, he was doing a shit job of it.

He wasn't ready to pull away from Takashi, but he forced himself to do so anyway, wiping his eyes and laughing nervously. "Sorry," he said.

"Don't." Takashi let Akira put space between them, but his hand lingered on Akira's elbow, like he was ready to force another hug if he thought Akira needed it. "What happened? Matt suddenly bolted out of bed a few minutes ago, half asleep and trying to put his shoes on the wrong feet. Said you were back. I thought he was sleepwalking or something."

Matt snorted. "No, that was just Red, I think. I've gotten to the point where I just sort of do what she wants, even if I'm not awake enough to be making any decisions."

Akira's lips twitched, but it took a few more deep breaths before he trusted himself to speak. "I promised everyone the full story over breakfast, but the short version is alternate realities."

Takashi blinked, his face set in his default pleasant mask like he was still processing Akira's words. "Alternate... realities?"

"Yeah. Voltron exists in a lot of them, and the teams are usually at least sort of the same? But it turns out there's not a lot of Akira Shiroganes out there." Akira wiped a wayward tear off his cheeks and flashed a cheeky grin. "Guess I've got a little bit of an ego, huh? Five days as a nobody and I'm having a full-on crisis."

Takashi's frown said the excuse wasn't quite as effective as Akira had hoped. After a moment's scrutiny, Takashi stepped closer, his hand moving up Akira's arm to the shoulder. "That sounds awful."

"It  _ is  _ nice to have a brother who knows who the fuck I am," Akira admitted, and damn, he really was off his game today. He sounded like he was about to burst into tears again at any second, and while that wasn't exactly false, it also wasn't something that needed to be projected to the group at large. "Fuck. Sorry for the soap opera. Interdimensional travel is a real trip."

"I can only imagine," Takashi said with a wry smile. "And stop apologizing." He gripped the back of Akira's neck and pressed their foreheads together, stopping Akira's latest attempt at deflection by stirring up more tears. "I thought you were  _ dead _ . I'm certainly not going to complain if you're a little clingy for a few days."

Akira's breath hitched, the dying clone flashing behind his eyelids, and he grabbed Takashi's wrist to ground himself in this reality. "Fine," he said, trying to sound put-upon. He paused for a beat, then flashed a mischievous grin. "Does this mean I can come sleep in your bed if I have any nightmares?"

Takashi looked inexplicably sad for a moment, and a lump lodged itself in Akira's throat. "Absolutely," Takashi said. "Hell, you don't have to wait for the nightmares if you don't want."

"Wait," Akira said, backpedaling furiously. "That's not-- I didn't--"

Takashi just watched him, steady and mournful, and Akira's words dried up. "You don't have to be alone tonight," Takashi said. "But it's your call. I'm just saying I don't have any objections."

"Ditto," Matt said. "I happen to know this castle makes for excellent blanket fort real estate, if you're in a nostalgic sort of mood."

Akira stared at him, a smile tugging at his lips, but it was Keith's quiet curiosity that pushed him over the edge. "Fuck it," Akira said with a laugh. "Let's do it."

* * *

If Akira was being honest, he figured the blanket fort suggestion was just a joke meant to ease the tension, and he'd gone along with the pretense because he didn't want to be alone tonight--he  _ really  _ didn't--and sleeping in Takashi and Matt's shared room felt less awkward if it was geared toward silliness rather than a ward against nightmares. (They hadn't come for him yet, but he didn't expect that to last.)

So it was with surprise and not a little fear that Akira let himself be steered toward the bed, where Matt quickly built a throne of stolen pillows. Akira was to be the architect of this fort, it seemed, while Takashi and Keith handled the heavy lifting (between bouts of utter bafflement on Keith's part.) Matt brought the technical know-how and supplies--stolen from no fewer than three linen closets.

Of course, blanket forts were finicky things, even more so when you didn't have any good anchor points except a handful of floating drones. The others kept overloading the drones with too many blankets, or knocking them out of position and bringing down whole sections of the roof.

Each time this happened, Akira laughed and tried to go help with the reconstruction, only to be shooed back to the mound of pillows with stern instructions to rest. "Getting yourself home was enough work for one day," Matt said, looking entirely too solemn for someone juggling six different blankets (three red, two black, and one yellow, because apparently Matt had gotten tired of looking for the appropriate colors.)

It was excessive and elaborate and patently ridiculous, but watching his brothers go to this much trouble just for him was... It was nice. It was more than welcome after the hell he'd been through, and he found himself alternately laughing and yawning as construction neared completion on Fort Shirogane. (That, too, had been the point of some debate, as Matt first tried to christen it Fort Holt, on account of his leadership role. Keith had opted not to take sides in that fight and instead had suggested that they hyphenate--something he must have pulled straight out of Matt's head, if Keith's devious grin and the spectacular shade of red that flooded Matt's face were anything to go by.)

Pidge slipped in at some point, completely unnoticed by the other three, who had somehow gotten into a tug of war battle, Keith and Matt against Takashi.

Takashi was winning.

Pidge sat on the edge of the bed, jangling their legs and stealing looks Akira's way. Akira just smiled and lifted an arm, and Pidge's face crumpled as they scrambled across the blankets and pillows to burrow into his side. Akira settled his arm around their shoulder and squeezed, his eyelids drooping as Takashi finally wrestled the last blanket away from Keith and Matt and draped it over the nearby drone. With that, the inside of the blanket fort dimmed to almost total darkness, broken only by the indicator lights on the drones that glowed through the blankets like so many stars.

Keith, Matt, and Takashi joined them on the bed, and Akira had to rouse himself enough to get off the mound of pillows so the others could take a few. The fort enclosed most of the room, and there were enough extra blankets, that Keith, Matt, and Pidge ultimately retreated to the floor, Pidge sprawling across both of the other two. That left Akira and his brother on the bed, and Akira was far too tired to fight it when Takashi tugged him close.

It had been years since Akira had slept in Takashi's bed. It was something they'd done a lot as children, apparently, but by middle school Akira had grown self-conscious about it and only ever gave into the longing for closeness when he hit a new low, or when Takashi himself instigated it.

Tonight, though, he was perfectly happy to turn his brother into a pillow. It was pleasantly warm and dark inside the blanket fort, the usual sounds of the castle muffled, and Akira was asleep before his mind had time to wander back to less happy realities.

* * *

Akira slept soundly and woke slowly to hushed voices. His mind, for a brief moment, automatically searched for clues to what kind of universe he'd found himself in this time: it was Takashi and Matt who were talking, voices low but fond, half their words lost to Akira's sleep-drugged brain. He caught Hunk's name, though, and talk of breakfast. Seemed pretty standard for Voltron-based realities.

The pillow beneath Akira's head suddenly vibrated with laughter and--wait.

Akira opened his eyes, blinking a few times as the floating lights overhead came into focus. Right. Fort Shirogane. He was home.

He smiled despite himself, then turned to make himself more comfortable against Takashi's side. Akira flung his arm around Takashi's waist, and Takashi curled his arm around Akira's shoulder, and it didn't matter that it was first thing in the morning; Akira was already on the verge of tears.

"Look who's finally up," Takashi teased. There was no bite behind the words; he was still in his pajamas, his hair disheveled and his smile sleepy and a little crooked. If Akira had to guess, he'd say Takashi hadn't been up for more than an hour himself.

Akira grunted. "How long was I out?"

"Like... ten hours? I'm not sure what time we actually got to bed. It's almost two now."

Akira stared up at him, his bleary mind refusing to process time for a long moment. "Weren't you just talking about breakfast?"

"Breakfast was the original plan," Matt said. "That was before any of us stopped to realize we'd all screwed our normal sleep schedules trying to bring you back. Pidge and Keith finally left to go find out what was happening around noon. Sounds like Hunk's still planning on making us breakfast, but he was waiting till you woke up."

"Aww," Akira cooed, already beginning to doze again. "Have I ever mentioned how much I love Hunk?"

Takashi chuckled, but now that Akira was up, it seemed Takashi's restlessness was out in full force. Considering he used to wake up at five--willingly--in order to run before the sun came up, it must have been a herculean effort not to give Akira the boot as soon as he woke up.

That, or Takashi really had missed Akira.

Ten hours wasn't enough time to erase all of Akira's fatigue, but his stomach was more awake than the rest of him, and the promise of Hunk's cooking was enough to drag him back to his own room to shower while Takashi and Matt got dressed. It was only once Akira was toweling off that he realized he'd slept soundly. No nightmares or anything. The universe must be kicking into overdrive to try to make up for his impromptu trans-reality roadtrip.

(Akira was sure it wouldn't be long before the needle swung back the other way. But he'd take advantage of the good luck for as long as it lasted.)

Breakfast was already on the table by the time Akira stumbled down to the kitchen--kitchen, not the formal dining room. Partly because Hunk and Akani were making pancakes and omelettes to order, partly, Akira suspected, because the entire team was too restless to sit in chairs around a table like civilized people.

Akira was right there with them, of course, so he wasn't complaining. Especially not when this arrangement meant a nearly endless supply of chocolate chip pancakes drowning in something that wasn't technically maple syrup but still tasted like a sugary dream.

Akira wasn't the only one drooping as breakfast started, but the food and the company roused them all, and the questions started rolling as Hunk switched places with his mom so she could eat while he started in on the next round of orders. The team wanted to know everything. Where he'd been, what he'd seen, who he'd met, how the other paladins compared to the versions in this universe. Thankfully, Akira's mood was greatly improved for the sleep, the food, and the easy laughter that chased the conversation around the table.

He sketched out the bare bones of his trip for the others, skirting around the dead universes and the one with Takashi's clones. There was nothing to be gained, either here or in those universes, from bringing them up, and Akira didn't want to ruin the mood just because the things he'd seen had messed with his head.

"We have a  _ what _ ?" Lance shrieked, when Akira brought up Rose.

Akira grinned, not least of all because Keith looked like he might just combust on the spot. He'd seemed mostly unfazed by the revelation that he and Lance were together in almost every other universe--pleased, almost giddy, but in a quiet sort of way. One mention of kids, though, and his entire face went slack. Akira wasn't sure if it was terror or shock or something else, but as Lance grabbed his arm and shook him, Akira was seriously afraid Keith was going to simply keel over on the spot.

"A daughter," Akira said, grinning. "The cutest little girl I think I've ever seen. And cuddly."

Lance squealed, clinging tighter to Keith's arm, and Keith reached up, almost mechanically, to pat his hand. He opened his mouth, then frowned and shut it again, his eyes slowly losing their deer-in-the-headlights quality and going more thoughtful.

Akira took pity on him--he probably hadn't even begun to think about starting a family yet, and shoving him into the spotlight  probably wasn't going to make the idea of his alternate self's kid any easier to swallow.

So Akira turned his grin on his brother. "Incidentally, this is also the universe where Takashi has a kid."

"Me?" Takashi asked. His eyes darted to Matt, a blush creeping into his face. "Like--"

"You and Allura, apparently," Akira said.

Across the room, Allura choked on a piece of pancake. Akira felt bad for a moment--but only a moment, because Takashi's face was white as a sheet, and Akira couldn't help the delighted laughter that bubbled out of him.

"If it makes you feel any better?" Akira said. "You and Matt are still dating there. Because your relationship is a universal constant even in realities where you're poly."

Allura coughed a few more times, her blush spreading to the very tips of her ears. "I'm sorry. I have nothing but the utmost respect for polyamorous relationships, and I'm sure the  _ other  _ Allura is very happy, but--It's just very strange to think of  _ us _ \--"

"Agreed," Takashi said, burying his face in his hands.

Akira patted his shoulder. "Hey, that's a big multiverse mood. I haven't even gotten to the part where some version of Black decided  _ Keith  _ was the best person to lead this team."

That was skirting dangerously close to unpleasant topics, but it was worth it to watch Keith puff up in indignation as the entire room erupted in laughter or mock horror. Matt very nearly snorted his milk, and Keith scrambled to defend himself before giving in and falling into a sulk.

Lance, of course, put on the worst of the dramatics, so Akira felt he was entirely justified in adding some fuel to the fire.

"You have no room to judge, Lance," Akira said, grabbing his water and smirking over the rim of the cup. "In that universe, you pilot Red."

There was more to talk about, of course. Akira had the flash drive in his pocket to give to Pidge--but that would mean explaining about the hoktril and the Altean Empire that had created it, not to mention breaking the news to Matt and Pidge that their dad didn't survive the war in every universe. He was going to tell them. He wouldn't keep this from them, no matter how much the telling was going to hurt. But it could wait at least until after breakfast.

For now it was enough to sit back and enjoy the laughter and good-natured ribbing.

"And hey, just think," he said, as Hunk bustled over with a fresh stack of pancakes. "We've still got the transporter, and at least one other Pidge kept a copy of the data. You guys might all get to meet your counterparts some day."

* * *

The nightmares gave him a few days' respite. Some combination of sleep debt and the team's stubborn insistence on keeping Akira close at all times. Takashi, Matt, and Keith were at his side almost nonstop, and they dragged him back to the blanket fort for two more nights before the drones started to lose power. The ceiling sagged, then caved in, and Akira preempted Takashi's next excuse to keep coddling him.

Not that Akira wasn't going to miss the instantaneous assurance that Takashi was okay each time he woke up. But he knew that he couldn't keep hiding in his brother's room forever.

And the nightmares, like hunters waiting for their prey to wander off from the pack, cornered him his first night back in his own room.

The dream was disjointed, a confused series of images with no connection to one another. A Garrison training exercise that took him through the clone facility, past empty glass pods that left Akira feeling like he was gazing into the void. The day the news broke of the Kerberos disaster, except Takashi was sitting on the bed behind Akira in his quarters and kept laughing as Akira broke down in tears. A mission gone wrong, Takashi broken and bleeding on the floor, except it was the first clone lying there in Black's cockpit, slowly suffocating. (This particular dream dragged on too long, Akira wandering the castle in a haze, and bit by bit he realized that no one else even knew who Takashi was.)

Akira woke unable to breathe, his blankets tangled around his legs, sweat-soaked hair pasted to his forehead and neck. He lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling and fighting down tears.

He was  _ home _ . He had been home for days now. He shouldn't still be stuck in those other realities.

He pressed a shaking hand to his face and forced himself to breath. He wasn't going to go crawling to Takashi's room because of a nightmare. He was a grown-ass adult, and he didn't need someone to chase the shadows away.

Before he'd quite talked himself down, though, someone knocked on his door, and Akira held his breath.

"Akira? Can I come in?"

Akira cursed, but kicked off his blankets and crossed to the door and opened it. If hearing Takashi's voice had hit him like a punch to the gut, then seeing him very nearly ripped his lungs right out of his chest. He breathed out in a rush, gripping the door frame to keep himself from lunging at Takashi for that extra little bit of assurance that this was real, and not just another dream.

"Did Red tattle on me or something?" Akira asked dryly. It was as good as admitting to the nightmares, but Takashi probably already knew about that.

Besides, the way his lips puckered said Akira had got it in one. Red must have noticed him wake up and prodded Matt to send Takashi over. Touching, but also unnecessary.

Akira sighed. "I'm fine, Takashi. Sorry for waking you."

"Nope." Takashi stuck his prosthetic out, catching Akira's door as it closed. "If you don't want me here, that's fair, but don't you dare apologize for something you can't control."

Akira opened his mouth, tired and irritable, and ready to snap back that Takashi had no right to tell him not to apologize. Fortunately, he caught himself before he stuck his foot in his mouth--because, after all, if anyone had a right to talk about trauma and self-loathing, it was Takashi.

He waited, face somber but understanding, as Akira wrestled with himself, then finally stepped back, letting Takashi into the room.

"Before you ask, it was just a nightmare. Some shitty training thing at the Garrison, I don't know."

"Uh-huh." Takashi sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Akira's twisted blankets. "Do you want to tell me what happened, or would a distraction be better? Or just try for more sleep?"

The question was so matter-of-fact, so pragmatic, that Akira knew it must be the same thing Takashi had asked Matt, or Matt Takashi, a million times before when one of them woke up in a panic. It calmed him, though, and he sat on the bed beside his brother, weighing his options. He'd promised himself he wasn't going to burden the others with this, with any of it, but... he couldn't. He couldn't keep pretending to be okay when he closed his eyes and watched Takashi die yet again.

"There was one alternate reality," Akira said slowly, staring at his hands. "Apparently Haggar had you for longer there, or had more authority over you, or something. Keith was human--half-human--there, so I guess he wouldn't have been around to fuck with her plans." Takashi tensed beside him, but squeezed his wrist as though to assure him it was okay to keep going. "Anyway, she... cloned  you. Him. Fuck. I know he isn't you, but it still hit me like it would if it had been you."

Takashi leaned over, pressing their shoulders together. "Can't say I blame you. If Haggar messed with you in this or any universe, I'd rip her head off, whether or not that Akira had any clue who I was."

Akira smiled, leaning into Takashi's touch. "Yeah. Well..." Akira's eyes burned, and he stared at the far wall. "He died. The clone did. Two of them. Though, turns out the original Takashi over there had already died and no one knew it ‘cause of the clone Haggar sent to replace him."

There was a long pause, and Akira cursed himself. He knew he shouldn't have brought this up. Takashi wouldn't like the idea of being cloned, killed, and replaced any more than Akira did. He should have just sucked it up and dealt with his own issues.

To his surprise, though, Takashi just pulled him into a hug, and though his hand was shaking, he curled around Akira like he meant to protect him from the universe. "I take it you were there, when the clones died."

Akira nodded. He didn't trust himself for anything more.

Takashi just hugged him tighter, cursing in his ear. "I'm sorry. I can't--fuck, Akira. I've shut down because I had a  _ dream  _ that you died. I can't imagine actually being there, even if it was another universe."

"Nothing you can do about it now."

"I can make sure you never have to worry that you're still there," Takashi said. "I've been there, Akira. I know waking up is sometimes the worst because you think you're back there--not even that. It just  _ feels  _ like you're back there. Hurting, helpless... Having Matt there to pull me out of that panic helps."

Akira grunted, even as Takashi reached for the pillows, arranging them so the two of them could lay side by side.

"You don't have to do this, Takashi. You deserve to rest, too."

Takashi snorted. "You haven't seen me at my worst. Trust me, Akira, I can handle a couple of days short on sleep. Just a few, and then we'll see how you're doing. Maybe set up a comms system so we can talk if you have a nightmare--if you'll feel less guilty about that than about dragging me  _ all  _ the way down the hallway past an  _ entire  _ ten other rooms."

His voice was dry, and Akira jabbed his knuckle into Takashi's ribs to get him to shut up. "So you're saying we can set up a baby monitor in your room."

Takashi paused, his mouth hanging open, and Akira smirked as the truth of the situation sank in. "Damn," he muttered. "I guess that is what I'm suggesting."

Akira laughed, relaxing back into the pillows. Maybe the baby monitor wasn't a terrible solution. Even just the sound of Takashi's breathing soothed Akira, sweeping the other realities away to somewhere they couldn't touch Akira. He was still wired from the rude awakening, but even that energy drained out of him as Takashi started talking about the book he was reading (something boring about tactics; Akira couldn't care less about the book, but Takashi's voice was better than a sleeping pill for quieting restless thoughts.)

He was home.

Maybe he still had to remind himself of that, sometimes. Maybe 'home' felt a little less secure after seeing the horrors that existed beyond the back door, but he was here, and so was Takashi.

That was enough for now.


End file.
